We hit Sacramento, and stayed with our wonderful cousins, Sharon & Rick. They are so wonderful, I’m sure you know them, so maybe that’s why I didn’t take pictures of us together!
We went for a nice walk in the “almost raining,” and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery.
OK, I got one picture with Rick, Sharon and Cherryl… but hardly a portrait!
Just south of Rick & Sharon’s place, the road washed out… a couple of years ago! What started as a fairly small breach has widened into a pretty deep gorge! No word on when the bridge will be replaced…
While in Sacramento, we met up with my sister Lori, and my Dad’s cousins, Dallen and Virginia. Great fun seeing all of them!
Their son Jeff is a super airplane guy – has won races at the famous Reno Air Races, and elsewhere. He has built or restored many planes as well. He is now working on one… in his garage. I’ve heard how he has some wings in the living room, but I had to see it to believe it. His wife is a saint! Great fun catching up with Jeff!
Then down to Fresno, California to see Cherryl’s uncle Charles. One gas station adjacent to our Supercharger site had posters up swearing at California’s high gas taxes – highest in America! I originally planned on pictures of all our charging stops… but over 5,500 miles racked up a lot of stops! I’ll throw some in here just because…
Uncle Charles lives by himself, and we had a great time catching up with him. Wish we could get out there more often! (He’d enjoy the company!)
Next stop was Watsonville, California – right by the ocean. On the trip west to the coast, we stopped at a fruit stand, working out of the Bell Station building. It was built in the late 1800’s; not as a train station, but a Stage Coach station!
In Watsonville, we met up with Cherryl’s Aunty Pat and cousin Theresa. And a cute dog, (possibly named Louise) Julia. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen these dear folks too! Great fun!
Next was Seaside, California, where we spent time with Wael, Kristi, and their kids, and his parents! We consider Wael our Egyptian Kid, and it is nice to see his beautiful family, and catch up with how much his children have grown! His parents are visiting from Egypt; we’ve previously met his father, and now got to meet his mother too! We had fun with the Egyptian parents, even though they don’t speak english, and we certainly don’t speak Arabic! You don’t have to speak the same language to recognize quality!
A little time at the beach, some nice driving through Carmel’s famous 17 mile drive, and some great food.
We had to stop and ogle this 1957 Ford Fairlane convertible. A couple were having wedding pictures taken with it. I’m sure the car is older than either of them. Probably even both of them together!
It really wasn’t beach weather – pretty chilly, with wind that cut through you easily. Still, very pretty!
It was great to catch up with Wael and his whole family!
Bob is an old family friend. His body may be 95, but he seems much younger. Bob and his family did everything with our family from the time I was about 7 years old.
His daughter Pam and her husband Larry met us at Bob’s home, and we shared a nice casual dinner. Again, really a wonderful time to catch up with long-loved ones!
On our final morning of visiting folks, we had breakfast with Malcolm and his new bride, Mary Jane. More wonderful folks, and a good time.
I almost never shoot pictures of my food, but this “Sinful Bread Pudding French Toast” caught my eye. It was fantastic!
From here on out, we would just drive towards home. We took a southern route, to avoid heavy snow we heard would have been on our way.
We did manage to drive through some snow, and lots of heavy wind!
In Albuquerque, (isn’t that fun to spell?) we had breakfast at “My Mom’s.” It was good food, but the place itself was fun too. I liked the chore list…
From there we booked on home. There were snowstorms north of us (not in our route) and fires all over Texas and Oklahoma. We saw the smoke fill the skies, but never saw flames. We just kept zooming homeward.
I also planned on a detailed summary of all our Tesla Testing Results. That summary is going to take too long to put together right now, and we have lots of comments we want to include. I hope to have a full Tesla Tutorial soon!
But I cannot wait to tell you about this next event!
We were driving on a two lane road through the country, with the Tesla in Self Driving mode. (We did most of our road trip in that mode!) We were zooming along, at or near the speed limit, when all of a sudden the car braked dramatically! We both started to say “Wha!” and before we could finish the word, a deer ran in front of the car! The car saw the deer at the side of the road, saw it as a threat, and braked quickly. Neither Cherryl nor I saw the deer before it ran in front of us. We then saw a second deer, apparently smarter than the first. Teslas have built in dash cameras, and we saved the footage of the deer crossing. I must tell you that the night vision of the camera was far better than our eyes… I can see the deer in the video long before we could in real life. Here is the video: