Yosemite to Pamona, CA (outside LA) (Fri. July 16)

I am glad we don't have too many more days like this. We get in the car and do nothing by drive, stop for gas, food and pit stops and then back to driving. It is about 6 hours without stops from Yosemite to the LA area so with stops it takes the entire day. It is tough on the boys to sit in a car all day long and see nothing really exciting for the entire day. But, that is one of the downfalls of trying to cover the country coast to coast and back in such a short amount of time. Luckily once we get to the next day's activities the boys seem to either forget how bad the car ride was the day before or realize they don't mind it so much since I got them to this next, new exciting stop.

We did have one bit of excitement along the road. We came across one of those frequent California brush fires. All the brush along the side of an overpass was on fire. The fire department was on the bridge above trying to put it out. The entire right lane was shut down so no car would get too close to the fire. Just as we went by we looked to the left and saw the bushes and brush in the median were now also on fire. I don't think the police and firemen had noticed it yet so we were glad we were sneaking through before they noticed it and shut down another lane if not the entire side of the road.

As we are driving along on these long days there are so many funny moments that happen in the car that I could never remember them all but there are funny stories, comments, signs on the road . . . that we do find even on these longest of days we are kept amused many ways. Today one funny thing that sticks out was Colin turned around to see Pedro waving his hand in front of Conor's face trying to get his attention thinking that Conor was just staring off into space. Little did Pedro know that Conor (as those of you who know him well will know) tends to fall asleep with his eyes open. So, though he looks like he is awake he is not. Pedro could not believe that Conor was really sleeping. It does look a bit freaky.

Luckily the long day on the road ended and the boys were able to get some of their energies out by chasing around a soccer ball and getting to sleep at a normal time. We have decided that tomorrow is going to be a down day for most of the day. We are all a bit burnt out and I am sooooo far behind on school work that I am starting to get a bit stressed (for those of you who do not know this I am still teaching online as we travel). So I will take a couple of hours to work while they finally spend some time in a campground pool. They will really need that pool as we have now gone from those really cold nights to over 100 degrees in just a matter of days.

Two things I have decided after this long day's drive.

1. If I never see a construction site again it will be too soon.

2. I am really glad I do not work in LA and live 20 - 30 miles east of the city and have to drive that drive every day. When we had 18 miles left on the GPS to the campground we hit rush hour traffic. It took us until it said 8 miles left on the GPS before we did much more than crawl along with regular total dead stops. I can not imagine doing that every weekday of my working life. I would jump off a bridge somewhere!!!