If you had asked me 24 hours ago where I was headed today I would have told you Seattle. After we got to Russ and Charisse’s Friday night we started talking about all the other places in the area we could see. We talked about Yosemite, Redwoods, San Francisco, the Pacific coast, the Northwest. Aunt Charisse is a California girl through and through. As she spoke about different areas in California and beyond, you could see how much she loves traveling the west coast.

We originally planned for this trip to go through Washington and Oregon, but nixed it because we felt like it was too far. Imagine our excitement to realize we weren’t as far as we thought, and then our disappointment when we reality struck and we recognized that, like all good things, this trip had to come to an end.

We started mapping our route during dinner at Mel’s Diner in San Francisco last night. At first count, it was something like 13 and a half hours to reach Seattle from our hotel in San Marcos. And that wasn’t including passing through the Redwoods. Amanda’s and my wants differed slightly here because she preferred to drive straight through to Seattle to be able to see that city, while I didn’t want to be so close to the Redwoods without stopping to pay homage to their awesome hugeness.

We discussed stopping an hour or so short of Portland instead, giving us about the same amount of driving time, but allowing us to see the Redwoods and visit the coast one more time before we headed back inland.

In the end, none of it mattered. With the amount of time we hav e left on this trip we couldn’t afford to spend another day going farther north with out making some headway back east. By hitting Yosemite and doubling back to San Francisco, we spent a third night in California, leaving us four days to get from the west to east coast, putting us driving no less than 12 hours a day for the rest of the trip, not including stops for Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore.

We began a big push to make up our lost ground this morning. We have about 265 more miles to make it to Idaho Falls tonight and then on to Yellowstone in the morning. We’ll have around 10 hours of driving to cover each day for the rest of the trip to get home Wednesday.

I have lotsa pictures and video from San Franciso that I hope to get posted fromthe cabin tonight. 🙂 it was such a beautiful city!
Cassie