July 10, 2017 Monday Day 23 Sacramento CA to Oceanside CA

We shared a nice breakfast with Gere and Betty, and then said goodbye. Not so sad, because we will be returning again in just two weeks for a longer stay with them. So nice.

Time for the home stretch.  Dick always says on the way home “the horse smells the barn.”  This means, no stopping to sightsee, or worrying about what the gas mileage is.  Just fill the tank with gas and head towards LA as quickly as possible, trying to avoid as much of the traffic as we can manage.

The drive was long and hot.  The landscape mostly strikingly dry and tan.  At times, we could see the highly irrigated farmland to the East of the highway with the coastal mountains to the west.  

There were so many groves of trees that produce almonds and pistachios.  Obviously they want more of these trees since we often saw large fields of newly planted trees.

We also drove past areas that had burned in previous fires, and saw hazy smoke in the skies from fires burning towards Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.  We were happy that our route didn’t take us close to the fires, but were very aware of the dry, dry conditions and knowing it doesn’t take much for a major fire to take off with this type of conditions.   At times we could really feel the wind blowing, too.

We often save a couple of CD’s to listen to towards the end and were able to enjoy some great storytelling as well as a National Public Radio Driveways Moments CD.  Even during a 5000 mile trip, there aren’t as many stretch es of road where we want to listen to stories or music.

We made it to Los Angeles by 2:30 but still ran into the early rush hour traffic.  There were parts of the drive through the greater LA area that were a slow slog, but we made it in reasonable time, given the conditions.

We pulled into our new home at 5:00.  We were returning from a long road trip for the first time since we  moved this Spring.   Everything was safe and sound.  Indeed, there is “no place like home.”  A great trip and confirming that we didn’t find any place that we thought, “I wish we lived here instead of where we do live.”  Glad to be back, and we will move into the plans for the next trip soon.