A long day

We started off this morning with some breakfast with both Becky & my sisters. There was some good conversation and a creamer incident that made everyone laugh quite a bit.

We hit the road around 10:00 and headed South. It was pretty much a solid driving day. I decided that we were not going to try for Monterey today, so we found a likely stopping point just short of San Francisco. Everything about the drive was great up until we hit the outskirts of Santa Rosa. Then it was 5-10 MPH for many miles... We hit the edge of Santa Rosa at 3:30 and it took us until 4:45 to travel 15 miles to Petaluma where we decided to spend the night and avoid the rest of the traffic.

I don't know how people can live with traffic that bad. It seems so silly to have to sit in traffic day in and day out just to live in a bigger town... I have so many issues with big cities and traffic is only one of them.

We tried calling our relatives in Portola Valley nearby. I thought that we could pop in and say hello on our way through, so I left a message on their answering machine. We'll see if they get the message before we're already South of here.

Despite the traffic, we found a place to stay that had a huge playground, so the kids had a chance to climb and run around after a somewhat long day of driving. I am relaxing by myself in the trailer with the dog while Becky is hanging out with the kids at the playground.

So far our only minor problem has been that we lost a marker light somewhere between Eureka and Santa Rosa. It fell off at some point, so I will have to find a replacement somewhere during our journey. Not a big deal at all.

Tomorrow we head through San Francisco and down the coast to Monterey where we hope to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If all goes well, we'll be there around noon and spend the entire afternoon enjoying the sights and sounds...