The Road Trip Home

The trip home from Vacaville was uneventful, and actually felt like one of the longest trips I have ever had to make, and that is saying something. I recall many trips to Utah to visit family and thinking, at the time, that the salt flats of the Utah desert would never end. But I think this trip rivaled those trips, and maybe even surpassed them. Not for any real reason I can think of, but simply wanting to be home makes a trip that is only 5 hours seem like an eternity.

I had my camera again, and took a slew of pictures. Its funny how there re many things I have never seen before, but saw for the first time simply because I was looking for them. Here are a few: one that caught my eye, one that fascinated me, and one that made me laugh.

I'm not sure what time it was, but there was a fair amount of cloud cover and a little bit of sun attempting to claw its way through the cloud cover. The result was really something to look at. I took this picture while moving at about 65 mph. The crazy thing is I actually stopped the truck a little bit later and took a similar picture that I really didn't like as much. Odd how sometimes things happen the way they do, and there is no way to repeat the performance. So I guess I am glad that this worked out like it did.

This is the Eel River. It slithers its way along the North Coast until it eventually spills out into thePacific Ocean. The water, in the summer time, is slow and warm and favorite for many to spend a day swimming and relaxing on its usually pebbly beaches. The spot I took this picture, however, is prone to horrible land slides in the winter time. In fact, exactly wherer I am standing was, a couple of times, covered in mud and rock and cut the North Coast off from the rest of the world. The fix? To build a new section of US 101 on the oppisite side of the river. This required the construction of two new bridges. Bridge building amazes me, how they can build a concrete monolith out over nothing is nothing short of amazing.

And last, a little bit of a laugh. Anyone who has driven the North Coast knows there are signs everywhere pointing to the various things there are to see and do. But at one place in particular, there is an informational sign pointing the informational sign ahead. How lost are we that we need an informational sign to point us to another? The Avenue of the Giants, mentioned in my post of the Road Trip, is beautiful, and well worth the effort to make the drive. The informational sign, which I am sure has all sorts of useful information, according this sign is a half mile ahead. Please feel free, if you are in the area, to stop and see this sign and let me know if it really was useful. Otherwise, until then, I will continue to laugh everty time I see it.