Too much city, too many highways, way too many people

Plans are a wonderful thing. You set expectations and forge ahead. Often, reality has a way of destroying the best laid plans. If you have never driven through the San Fransisco / Oakland area my advice to you is DON'T!!! This is a place where the DOT made decisions at a spagetti dinner when someone spilled their plate on the presentation slides. Cripes! It's a nest of woe waiting to trap the weary traveller. All we wanted to do was catch a bypass and get over to Interstate 5. Our first BIG mistake was not getting there until the beginning of rush hour. We tried. We just didn't make it. What a mess. I've driven in a lot of cities and none were as bad as this. At least Nick got to see a super tanker moored in the bay from one of the bridges we crossed. We completely missed the connect and got turned around and ended up on a toll road, where they stole another ten bucks from us. Don't drive in CA either. The gas is right at $2 per gallon. It will put you in the poorhouse early. So we finally made it out of there, heading to LA in the late afternoon. We decided to overnight in a rest area which on I5 is always a bad idea. Too many people and in this case, too many trucks. We parked between a couple of the big boys and enjoyed the sound of a reefer gunning up and shutting down all night. Cat didn't get much sleep and I wasn't much better. Then there was the heat. So much fun.

We climbed the Grapevine the following day which proved to be very taxing on the truck. More on that later. We got into North LA around 2PM but by then, it was too late. Bumper to bumper nightmare. Even on I405. It's been a lot of years since I drove that highway and I'm sure it must have been bad then but I don't remember it being quite this bad. We finally pulled off to shake our kinks out and while on the exit I heard it. A sound like a tire rubbing somewhere. At first I assumed it was just the road. Different textures cause different sounds on tires. That proved to be the beginning. By late that afternoon we were down by Oceanside, driving through the town, looking for a possible campsite on the beach. No such luck. Once again I'm irritated by these bozos and their fondness for names of highways rather than using the numbers. What so wrong with a simple lable like 101S so those of us that know how to read a map can navigate? No, they just call it the Coast Highway. Thank you very much~ grrrrr

So we roll along here and discover that all the beaches are Day use only. That's nice but not what we're really looking for. Start checking RV parks. All full. Booked through the week. Wonderful. So there's no place to park this delightful monstrosity and try to enjoy the sand, salt, and sun. Inside joke. I personally don't care for beaches. The northern beaches of the Washington and Oregon coast are Ok but they're the only ones I've actually enjoyed. When asked why I don't like them I say "I hate the sand, don't like swimming in salt water, and get sick of being burnt to a crisp". 'Nuff said. Even so, I'm willing to camp there and let Cat and Nick enjoy themselves as long as they wish. Only there's no place to camp. Great. So what do we do now? In the meantime the sound I heard becomes a minor tremor, then a low growl when I coast. Not cool, I'm thinking. Several times stopped to check everything and find nothing amiss. Very disturbing. We think for a while about laying over in a Wal-Mart parking lot then think better of it after spendind time there and feeling very uncomfortable about it. I really need to talk to someone about the truck and have it looked at but by now it's late Saturday evening. Not much hope in that. And with no place to stay, we decide to press on. Also by this time Cathy is disgusted with California for a lot of reasons and is asking herself what in the world drew her here. We decide to forget San Diego attractions and move on, leaving the stinky cities of California behind. Our new plan; head to Phoenix where Megan is living with her father an visit her for a while. By then we should know if the sound I hear is serious.

I think it is. We're here now and I'll have it looked at sometime tomorrow. It's not a pleasant place to be. The trip across the desert was intense. Well over one hundred degree heat. Hard on us, hard on the dogs, and hard on the vehicles. We stop in Phoenix where the mercury is popping out at 110 and are thankful we made it this far. I discover oil on the trailer safety chains and it looks very much like it's coming from the rear. Not good. Not good at all. I'll know more tomorrow. Right now, I'm exhausted, still too hot, and ready for a peacful night's rest. For those keeping track, no, we didn't drive straight through. We made it to a rest area about 40 miles from La Center where we spent the night. Thankfully, much less crowded and since the elevation was around 4000 ft, actually cool enough at night to sleep well.

To hot here. Don't like it. How can these people live in it? Insanity.