Onefinemess

…we’re home!

(Pretend I’m posting this at 6am on Sunday the 3rd).

So.  Yeah, our (mini) epic (for us) road trip has come and gone, and we survived.  Thrived maybe?  Even?  Too much? Yeah, probably.  But we did ok.

We left at about 8:45pm for the trip down & arrived in Sac around 7am I think.  We stopped a few times to feed the little one and cleanse the plumbing, but no meal stops or anything.  I drove to Redding(ish) then Jen took over from there and I tried to pass out in the back seat.  I don’t think the moon was out, because I remember driving in near pitch blackness a lot of the way, and being unable to see most of the scenery (some of which we saw on the way back in the almost full moon light).

The southern half of the 5 in Oregon (miles 170->0ish) are obnoxious to drive.  Up and down, over and over again, ears popping and never quite unpopping, in and out of thick fog banks…hella meh.  But totally doable.

The first hundred fifty or so miles into Cali are kind of annoying too – lots of downhill, some uphill, and not many places to stop.  I’m sure this part of the drive is beautiful in the sunlight though – but we were having none of that!!

The kids did pretty good.  M woke up angry and ate a few times on the way down, but slept really well almost the whole way back – he got upset every time we stopped for gas, but fell back asleep quickly enough.  Z slept most of the way down, after falling asleep late.  On the way back he did the same, but woke up and snacked from 3-4am ish.  He was so out of it, but adorable of course.

For the trip back, we hit the freeway at about 830pm and got home around 5:15am – not bad eh?  Jen drove all the way to uhh… Ashland I think, then I took the last half.  Unfortunately the back of the van was 2x as full as the first trip, so she wasn’t able to sleep back there much.

We got to spend lots of time with pretty much all the family we wanted to see – but more importantly, so did the kids.  Z learned “grandma” and “grandpa” and used them correctly by the time we left – and M even said his first word (which my mom & some other family got to hear, it was very cool).  The boys grew so much in just 10 days it was crazy.  Not physically but, you know, they each picked up noticeable new tricks, mannerisms, vocabulary, whatever.  It was a lot of work wrangling them for all those days, but also quite awesome to have that time to spend with them.

We also got to visit some old friends I hadn’t seen in a decade, and some that we check in on every few years.  We spend a day at the sunny beach… in December.  I miss that part of California, that’s for sure (the weather, duh!) – but not much else.  Driving more than half the length of California twice (not personally, but you know, being in the car, blah blah), the main sense I had was just the sense that I knew this was no longer my home.  I enjoyed it for the things I liked, but didn’t feel particularly drawn to get all misty eyed or anything.

The kids got entirely too many presents, resulting in the aforementioned packed-ass back of the van, and  (I suspect) a thorough re-organization and re-evaluation of their toys & clothes – time to throw stuff out!

What else?  Oh, camera.  Our sweet camera stopped working randomly at my mom’s house.  So we dashed out to grab a new one and wound up with a “Canon Powershot SD950 IS” (I think that’s it, I’ll double check tonight) – basically an updated version of the SD750 that just broke.  I highly recommend it to other Canon lovers (there are at least two that read this blog…) – it’s a worthy replacement and decent upgrade to the SD750.

Oh – the note.  When we stopped briefly to visit some friends in Santa Barbara, someone left a note on our windshield saying we were blocking their driveway.  I really don’t think we were, unless they drive a hummer or something.  I left room.  Whiners!  Whatever, better than a ticket :).

The new van drove great, I thought.  Nothing broke, nothing sounded funny, no fluids ran out, etc.  Although now it’s about 2000 miles overdue on the 3000 mile checkup.  Heh.  Gotta schedule that.

Too much happened to go into much detail, but it was a great trip.  Maybe we’ll even do it again in another two years.   Maybe the kids will be mellow enough to do it in the daytime so we can finally see the scenery.   Then again, maybe we won’t be in Portland by then.

One can dream.

[edit 1: Speaking of, here's my favorite photo from the trip, click to embiggen.]

[edit 2:  Yeesh. 967 miles from Portland to Santa Barbara, says this map.]

Tags: travel

This entry was posted by onefinemess on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 8:41 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.