one last driving marathon

8/4 Portland to Home

Up early, packed up, and in the car by 7am. Why is the last day of any road trip always a long long drive? We were suffering from serious travel fatigue in our last week on the road so I suppose doing the last leg in one go was inevitable. We had thoughts of trying to visit one more friend in Santa Cruz on our way south or possibly stopping for the Underground Gardens in Fresno, but the thought of one more night in a motel just filled us with dread. So... 14 hours of driving in one day? No sweat. The last three months had me well prepared for the task.
There is little to say about the drive. It was just long, and in fact I remember very little of it. With the end traveling in sight very little mattered other than staying awake all the way home. Shasta greeted us South of the California border and threw us into the Central Valley. I think lunch was had in the car while driving and other than stopping for gas and a few leg stretches our only pit stop was dinner at Denny's in Red Bluff.
We slogged our way through traffic West of the bay area and hopped on the 101 near San Jose. As night fell some low clouds and fog turned up on the road ahead. It made me think of all the unknowns coming for us at the end of the road; no jobs, no home, no real plan. Oh well, we had chosen to take this grand tour knowing what we would have to give up. Now we'd just have to dig in and get to work.

As the headlights came on we figured that if fatigue set in and threatened to send us into the ditch, a stop for the night would be OK, but that never happened. This marathon went very smoothly and we made it home by 11pm.
Here we are in the morning after our 16 hour day. Unloading Rodney and sorting the pile would just be the first step on the next journey.