Trip 22

In the last two years that my daughter has been at school in Northern California I've made the 1,000 mile round trip up there 21 times. Today is trip 22. We're going up today and will come back on Monday. Trip 23 will start next Wednesday when I go back up to bring her home for the summer. Up on Wednesday, back on Thursday.

Good thing I enjoy driving. I've driven all but one of these trips.

I've gotten so good at this I can pretty much tell you what time it will be when we pass various points along the way. If you'd like to play along, here you go:

• 5:00 am - Depart home
• 5:18 am - Disneyland
• 5:45 am - Gene Autry Museum
• 6:05 am - Magic Mountain
• 6:45 am - T/A Truckstop at the bottom of the Grapevine
• 7:15 am - 1st gas stop in Buttonwillow. Chevron for gas, McDonald's for restroom and breakfast. #2 breakfast with a Diet Coke for me, small parfait for the Mrs., 3 oatmeal raisin cookies to split a little later
• 8:00 am - Hwy. 41 interchange
• 8:30 am - Smelly cows at Harris Ranch
• 9:00 am - Little Panoche Road
• 9:30 am - Los Banos exit
• 9:55 am - 2nd gas stop in Wesley

Here's where this trip will be different from the rest. Instead of heading up 580 and various other highways to Rohnert Park we're going to stay on I-5 all the way to Sacramento where we'll be meeting my brother-in-law at the California State Railroad Museum. His birthday is this month and we'll be touring Old Sacramento for awhile before heading over to his new home in Davis.

We'll drive the last 80 miles to our hotel in Santa Rosa later in the day. We'll spend Saturday with the college girl and attend her repertoire concert that night, Sunday with her and another concert that night, before coming home on Monday. Should be fun, though it's supposed to be in the 90's there over the weekend and we're not used to that kind of heat in that area. It's usually on the cool side up there.

I'll have pictures and probably some concert video later. There should be regular Twitter updates along the way between blog postings.