The Long Road Home

I crashed again last night. Was sound asleep before 9:30 and didn't wake up until 6 a.m. Missed the end of Desperate Housewives and didn't do a thing on the computer. I don't know why I was so tired--Walt did all the driving.

It was nearly noon before we left Santa Barbara, since everyone slept late after Brianna's party. But after a lovely breakfast, cooked by Joe, we started on our ride home. Nobody hit our car as we left town, which we took that as a good omen.

If you are about to start an 8 hour drive, it's lovely to be driving into this:

The skies were this wonderful blue with fluffy clouds most of the way home.

On the way into Santa Barbara, we had passed a hillside--or several of them--which were covered with mustard so gorgeous it blinded your eyes. I decided we had to stop at the rest stop on the way out so I coulod get a picture. Unfortunately the rest stop was "behind the mountain" which hid all the mustard, but I did get this hint of things as we flew by in the car.

We were all set with the end of the book we had listened to on the way down, David Baldacci's "Absolute Power." He does tend to go on a bit. There was a long stretch as you go toward the end where, if I had been reading this in book form, I would have flipped through the pages quickly. When you are about ready to find out who the murderer is, you don't want to spend a lot of time on endless descriptions and recaps! As an audio book, the suspension mounts but you end up rolling your eyes and saying things like "oh just pull the trigger, already!" I don't want to hear about the sweat in your eyes or how your stomach feels or what the air around you feels like at this particular point in the book, thankyouverymuch!

We stopped for gas in San Luis Obispo at a Shell Station near the Madonna Inn. The Madonna Inn is a wonder.

The outside of the place is painted a bright pink. We've only been there, once, for lunch--just to see the place. This is the motel where all the rooms are in different themes (I still want to see the Cave Man room some day!). When we went there many years ago for what I remember was a pretty expensive lunch, Walt told me I had to see the urinal in the men's room. He stood guard while I went in to explore.

But there was no exploring today. We were hurrying home ... and they were closing in on figuring out who was responsible for the murders.

It was coming up on 4 when we saw the familiar water tower at Gonzales. The water tower is across the highway from the Burger Queen, so, of course, we had to stop for a late lunch/early dinner.

This time I did not have the mushroom swiss burger an onion rings, like I usually do, but a simple hamburger and fries. It did the trick and got us back on the road again in no time.

We still had an hour and 23 minutes left to go in the book and I couldn't figure out why since everything had pretty much been figured out and all that remained was to actually confront the mastermind of the crime. Why would that take nearly an hour and a half.

Well, it turned out that it didn't. The book finished and there was a bonus short story attached, also quite good. But finally we got it all finished and we turned on music to accompany us on the rest of the ride home.

The dogs were excited to see us and when I went back outside to start to unload the car, Polly uttered a sound of such surprise and disappointment that I was leaving again that I just had to giggle.