Our Last Day in California

It was the last full day we had in California. A bittersweet day, to say the least.

Jim asked someone at the hotel if there was a good breakfast place around, and they said there wasn’t and we would be better off to find somewhere on our way to Sacramento.

The traffic was insane on the way! And it cost $5 to drive over a bridge. And it wasn’t even the Golden Gate Bridge. We thought about going into San Francisco and driving over it, but it would have probably added 2-3 hours onto our drive for the day. When I originally planned the hotels/drives, I thought it would be great that we only had about 80 miles to our hotel in Sacramento, that it wouldn’t take that long. But it did.

We finally stopped at an IHOP along the way. It was probably halfway between Berkeley and our destination.

This was after we watched motorcycles drive down the middle line between cars going the same direction. When the cars were stopped, the cycles drove right down the middle. It was very scary to think about what might happen to them especially remembering the accident our friend was in last year just following the rules of the road.

 

It was a weird feeling, saying goodbye to the Pacific. Seeing it was something I had wanted to do for a long time. It was one of those things in your life that you want to do but you know there is a possibility you will never see it.

But I did.

To say I fell in love with California might be a little dramatic, but I feel the passion in my heart each time I mention this trip… every time I relive a day we spent there together, just the two of us in a crowd of people with the ocean playing its symphony in the background.

And the weather had changed so much! It was about 60 the whole time we were on the coast, but just 70 miles inland, it was 90. Isn't that just crazy?

We finally made it to our hotel, which was a nice little Fairfield Inn by the airport. The room was smaller (and less expensive!) than we had been staying in, but it was pretty nice. After Jim hauled everything into the room, I wondered how we were every going to pack it all in the four suitcases we brought. We had added stuff along the way, water, snacks, souvenirs, a fan. We decided we would leave the water and the snacks we couldn’t pack away with the hotel staff.

We were both feeling the exhaustion at this point. I had such great plans for seeing the capital building after meeting a friend for dinner. But after we ate dinner, we found a Walmart (and I can’t remember why we even went there) and went back to the hotel. At 7:00, we were down in the lobby in our pajamas with our snacks and cards. We watched the Olympics women’s soccer match while playing. Finally, at 10, we were worn out and went back to the room.

It was pretty neat that we weren’t the only hotel guests that were hanging out in the lobby. People were coming in and using the microwave and making coffee and hanging around if even for a few minutes.

We didn’t take a lot of pictures this last day. Only the traffic one and this one of us with our friend and her son.

The next morning, we were packing up and heading home to see our family. We were glad to be seeing them, for sure, but we were also a little sad that our trip was coming to an end.