Day 29 – Home Sweet Home

As promised, I let the kids swim at the pool, which didn’t open up until 8am, so we couldn’t get on the road until 9:30am, but then we just had a six hour drive home, and it seemed like nothing in comparison to what we had been doing.

Driving through Arizona was still pretty amazing – with beautiful rock formations, kind of like in Utah. When we crossed into California, we hit the desert big time. I thought New Mexico and Texas were a lot of driving through nothing, but the eastern part of California was the first time I actually wondered if I’d run out of gas before getting to the next station. California doesn’t have these big travel stops like the other states, but the little gas station and Dairy Queen in Ludlow where we stopped for lunch was still well-visited by people returning from Lake Havasu and “The River”.

By the time we hit Barstow, we also started getting more traffic, and after another hour or so – as soon as we crossed the Cajon pass, the endless miles of suburbia that Southern California is known for, began. I just kept watching for how many miles to Riverside, because I knew it would only be an hour from there. We missed most of the Labor Day traffic and were cruising home at a wonderful pace, until we hit the 5 freeway near our house. I had forgotten that the freeway going south to San Diego backs up every Saturday, and we got caught in the car pool lane and couldn’t get over for a good 20 minutes. I realized I have been pretty lucky with traffic on our trip, because I was having an awful time being patient. But maybe it was because we were minutes from home.

The kids insisted on stopping at the school first to see who their teachers are this year, and then we were home. Phew! What a trip!