Sunday Drive 30 Aug 2020

Yet another Sunday marathon drive. Still in COVID land 2020.

Audio book this time was "The Hunting Party" by Lucy Foley. This drive fell just short of the 10 hours 8 minutes of this book. (Still had about 40 minutes left on the book when we arrived at home.)

Started out on Ave D (CA-138). Could see quite a bit of burned areas from the Lake Fire from the past couple of weeks.

North on Interstate 5 to Maricopa Hwy (CA-166). Coming out just above Santa Maria. 

North on US-101 transitioning to CA-1 into Moro Bay area. Taking CA-1 north along the ragged edge to Willow Creek Beach Day Use area. The rest of CA-1 was closed at this point due to the current fires in Big Sur area.

We stopped at the Willow Creek parking area and had a nice picnic lunch in the car (still social distancing people) and enjoyed the overcast day. The temperature outside made for a perfect day. Not to hot not too cold.

From there, we headed back south taking CA-1 to US-101. Making a small stop at "Arroyo Hondo Old Hwy 101 Bridge to shoot a couple nostalgia photos and stretch the legs. And then back home via CA-126.

Smokey Weekend Drive 23 Aug 2020

Very smoke filled sky drive.

First out to Boron to see the new Loves service station that is being built.

Took CA-58 all the way to Barstow and drove parts of the original Route 66 down town Barstow.

Back on US-15 north bound to the Fort Irwin exit. Drove out to the Ft Irwin gate. Smoke was so thick in the air that visibility was only about a quarter mile. Did make for a very surreal but cool visual when 2 Black Hawk helicopters came cruising out of the smokey air about a quarter mile in front of us about 200 feet off the ground in formation. Disappearing back into the sky about as fast as they appeared.

Just before the main gate we turned back around and headed back to Interstate 15 south. Exiting at old CA-58 business route. Merging back onto CA-58 out at Linwood road. Exiting at Kramer Junction and heading North on US-395 to 9-mile canyon road. Taking that past Kenedy Meadows up to Black Rock Station. Back down to Kernville. Out Bod fish and back to CA-58 up through Tehachapi and back home.

Another Sunday another Drive 2 Aug 2020

Went for another marathon Sunday drive on August 2nd, 2020.

This was the longest one yet that we have gone on in a single day.

We chose a new audio book, "Nine Perfect Strangers" by Liane Moriarty. Went to the grocery store to get some traveling sandwiches, salads and other snacks.

Started out going up US 395 toward Bishop and Mammoth. Ended up going all the way up to Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe actually looked a little bit like 4th of July weekend, becuase there were so many cars parked on the side of the road around the lake. All of the state park beaches were closed due to COVID restrictions. But that wasn't stopping people from parking outside the areas along the road side and hiking back to the beaches.

Kings Beach was also very crowded with people and most not social distancing or wearing masks at the time. So we just kept driving.

We end up going up to Truckee and catching I-80 across to just outside Sacramento. From Sacramento we headed south down US 99 and finally back home.

It was a long day of driving, about 15 hours, and about 950 miles round trip.