Tonight I get to sleep in my own bed
Trip Start
Apr 02, 2010
1
36
Trip End
May 01, 2010
San Jose, California
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Greg's Version:
Today we go home so we can sleep in tomorrow. What I had planned to do was to drive the secondary highways up to Hollister then US-101 back home. It almost worked out that way.
From Barstow I drove to Mojave. The highway out of Barstow has changed a lot in the few years (seven years?) since I last drove it. The four-way stop is now a signal light and much of the roadway is now four lanes.
The highway now goes around the city of Mojave but I wanted to drive by the airplane bone yard and see if there were any trains in Mojave. Someday I will see if there is a way to visit the airplane bone yard but for now we just drove by it and stopped at the Shell station downtown for a break. I took pictures of a couple of Union Pacific locomotives parked across the old highway but otherwise there was nothing going on in town.
From Mojave the highway goes over Tehachapi Pass near the famous Tehachapi Loop where the railroad loops over itself to gain altitude. We were impressed by the giant wind farms in the pass and, this being May 1, just how green everything was.
A quick stop for gasoline and a Starbucks fix in eastern Bakersfield and we were off once more. We traveled north on CA-99 then turned west onto CA-46 then north again on CA-33 to Coalinga for lunch.
We found the nice little family owned and operated Mexican Restaurant. Oh, it was nice to eat California Mexican food again. I asked the young lady serving us about driving to Hollister. She said she did not like that road and suggested that I drive back to I-5 and take 152. So that is how we got home.
Mary's Version:
When Greg talked about going the back roads, I remember thinking, (I didn't say it, he was driving), "I want to go the fast way, whichever way that is." As I said, I was ready to be home. I was glad, after lunch, that the young lady suggested we get on 5, instead of going the back way to get home. It was an uneventful trip, there weren't nearly as many cars on 5 as Greg had anticipated. Phew, home at last! You know, you loved the vacation, but now we, (especially Greg), needed a vacation from our vacation! Thanks Greg, for a wonderful trip! We can both now say that we've been to the Arctic Circle, all the way down to Key West! How about that? Oh, and we've both been to all 50 states!!!!
