The Long Drive Home

After leaving our daughter behind in Rohnert Park for her second semester at college, we made the long drive home today...all day. We left the hotel at 6:30 am and arrived home at 5:30 pm. About 8 1/2 hours of that were driving - the rest lunch and a stop to visit my father-in-law in Santa Paula.

Because of the threat of snow on the Grapevine and the stop we planned in Santa Paula, we decided to take the 101 south instead of the I-5. That change adds about 60 miles and somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes to the drive. About 250 miles of I-5 are chalkline straight and most days you can set your cruise at 75 and never touch it for 3 hours. All you have to do is point your car between the lines.

The 101 is a different story. You can't just point, you have to drive. It has curves and hills and a lot of it isn't even freeway. There aren't any stoplights, but there can be cross traffic. You just can't go as fast as you can on the I-5. It's infinitely more scenic than the other road (unless you really like seeing thousands of smelly cows), but you pay a price for the view.

It was lightly raining as we left Petaluma and that continued until we got to the Golden Gate Bridge. The 101 goes through San Francisco, and I mean through. It stops being a freeway when you exit the bridge and you then drive several miles down Lombard and Van Ness Streets to get back to a freeway. I wouldn't want to make that drive during rush hour, but at 7:30 on Sunday morning it's not bad. The route takes you right by City Hall and the Davies Symphony Hall (where my daughter and I attended a concert last September), and the sights of the city are interesting if you can do it quickly.

The weather held off until we got south of Salinas and then the skies opened up. For 70 miles we ran in moderate to heavy rain, and when the rain quit the wind really started blowing like mad. We got bounced around pretty good all the way down to Ventura.

We only hit brief pockets of rain after that and managed to get where we needed to go without hitting anything we weren't supposed to hit. A long day, but everybody's where they're supposed to be and nobody got hurt. I can't complain about that.