We checked an important item off our list before leaving Sacramento:

We had to go to the western origin of Rt. 50 to see the Ocean City sign. Remember this one (from OC)?

So now we’ve closed the loop (sort of). Hooray!

After that, we stopped by Brian’s aunt Ginny and uncle Joe’s house in Brentwood, Calif. We enjoyed a truly lovely visit with them and with Brian’s other aunt Mill and uncle Rich, who are here visiting Ginny and Joe:

After that, we drove up to the Point Reyes National Seashore, where we finally touched the Pacific Ocean!

Point Reyes looks like a really fabulous place to vacation; it has many beautiful features, including crazy-looking cliffs and a lighthouse and an elk refuge. For us, though, it was just so cold (surprise: the Pacific Ocean is extremely cold north of San Francisco in late September!!) and so cloudy that we couldn’t really enjoy the full effect. Hopefully someday we can go back!

After that, we drove along Highway 1 for a bit. On our way out, we saw some pelicans:

and seals!

After that, things got a little dicey. Highway 1 is famous for winding its way around cliffs near the ocean. It’s so pretty!

But it’s soooo winding! Between the very curvy, frequent turns and my fear that we were going to fall off the cliff (but mostly the twisty turns), I felt really carsick for the first time on this trip (remarkable considering my history). That route was so intense that even Brian felt carsick. We were not very into that! So I think we may scrap plans we had to drive down Highway 1 down to Big Sur. We also realized tonight that we have to be back in D.C. in just two weeks — less than that, actually — so we need to start figuring out what we can skip. We lost quite a few days to illness in South Dakota, and the whole first leg of Michigan was not in our initial plans, so we want to make sure we use our remaining time well!

Anyway, we attempted to go to Muir Woods on our way down from Point Reyes, but alas, we arrived 10 minutes before closing time, so we weren’t allowed in. (In fact, Brian wants to be sure I share that after noticing us take a flash photo of the sign outside the park, the park ranger manning the gate accused us of flicking a cigarette butt into the trees! Oy vey!) So we just kept on driving until we got to San Francisco (via the Golden Gate Bridge):

We stopped in town for a quick dinner and a fresh air/carsickness recovery break and considered staying in SF for the night, but ultimately we decided to stay outside the city at the Super 8 in San Bruno. Right now we’re working on figuring out our next steps. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under 2008 USA Road Trip.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.