Longest Drive

Welcome to San Francisco. You got here fast. It took us all friggin' day. Way longer than we anticipated. We had google mapped from hotel to hotel at 5 hours. We left at 10 am and got here at 6:30- you do the math. When you think you have a much shorter drive ahead of you than you really do, mentally the drive seems to go on FORVER. But let's back track shall we. From the 101 headed south we hit up the Avenue of Giants and made it to Endor. Not bad for an hour's drive. No Ewoks, but a giant Immortal Tree. A tree that just wouldn't give up the ghost and today, through lightening strikes and floods and overzealous loggers, continues to grow and flourish. We came, we read the signs We took a photo in an old tree trunk, and we eased on down the road, like in the Wiz.

Next stop, lunch is a lovely little town, obviously over run with disgruntled hippies and their children and grand
children. Perfect for a food stop for people who like things like smoothies and salads. Organic food to go. This little town even has a parent co-operative run 6-12 grade charter school. Perhaps when we are ready to get off the grid and disappear from humanity, this will be where we end up. William saw the googled information on the school and started to worry we were thinking of sending him instead of SLAA. Poor guy. I assured him, I was only curious on a personal, non-parent kind of way. I am kind of sad we will miss the Gaia festival this weekend, though.

You can't drive through Bigfoot country without some kind of Bigfoot sighting. We found ours at a bathroom break/ weird stuff sightseeing stop somewhere in BFE on the 101. Shrek was there, a Blue fairy attacking Pinnochio's nose with a knife. (I think it was supposed to be a wand. But since it looked more like a knife it looked like he was visiting a plastic surgeon.)

I did find a gigantic nome I wanted to strap to the roof of our car and take home with me. I think he would be perfect protecting our yard and staring into our not-so-polite neighbor's windows. Plus, he is super-duper awesome and I developed a bit of a crush on him in the few minutes we were together.

Alas, 7 hours later we made it! Well, almost. We made it to the traffic heading to the Giants game, and the traffic of going from 4 lanes to 2 to cross the Golden Gate bridge during rush hour. This is the picture I took while hanging out the window and hoping I didn't drop my phone somewhere along the 101 over the Pacific Ocean/ San Francisco Bay while going 60 mph. Hopefully, I will get a less dangerous, better shot tomorrow when we head out on the town.

But tonight we are all too tired. We hit the hotel, decided we wanted NOTHING to do with driving around tonight after spending all day in the car, grabbed some Thai food, a Redbox movie and called it a night so we have some energy for tomorrow. Why am I more tired tonight after sitting in the car the whole day, than I was yesterday after a car ride, a cave, and a hike? It is the mystery of road tripping, and one day I might solve it. (If I can wake up enough to really think about it.)