I finally made it up north to get my belongings out of storage. I did it in 3 days! I left Monday morning around 11 and returned Wednesday night here, around 5 p.m. Here is my apartment complex, before I left.

Round trip the miles were 1,002. And don't even ask me about the gasoline money. I do believe that it was worth the trip. As now I have my things here in my apartment. Today I took stock of everything I have. And I am missing my computer monitor, speakers, printer, a Breyer black stallion horse statue and my crock pot. And of course the new Singer sewing machine that was stolen out of the van, while I was sleeping at the Modesto Days Inn. I'll get back to that later.

I took lots of pictures. I think not enough though. As it was so beautiful, on the way there, and on the way back. I thought, wow, it's hard to imagine countryside as beautiful as this, while living in a city. But there are places like that, and it was so good to see it all.

What I did was, I drove up the 5 and stopped in Sylmar and took pictures of my old neighborhood. We (the family that used to be), lived in a rural area. It isn't so rurual any more though. And all of the places where we used to ride our horses are now built upon. Here is our old house. It looks completely different. It had a circular driveway and still does. The property was surrounded with olive trees, like it was in the middle of an olive orchard. And it kinda was, as well as every other house in the area. It seemed that sylmar was a huge olive orchard. And where there weren't olive trees, there were pomegranite trees.I remember it being so much bigger then.

 

Here are some houses where friends used to live.

The house below is where my friends and I and my brother used to go to smoke cigarettes. Once we took a dump in the closet. The house was vacant for a long time. And we used it a lot to do that. And when a family bought it, the kids became our friends. And we told them what we did in their closet. It was hilarious, the stuff we used to get into.

 

The shed above used to be a sheep barn. The Veronnis used to own it and lots of sheep. I used to carpool to Catholic school with them. I remember once while being driven to school one morning what for some reason I have never forgotten. One of the daughters had moved out of the home. And she was telling her mother, Mrs. Veronni, that she will have to bring over some food to her, as she didn't have any food. Mrs. Veronni had a bad temper, and started to yell saying "the sheep are more important than you are!" It just seemed to me, that the mother was mad at her about something other than sheep.

This picture below is of a scarecrow that someone put right on the corner. It looked cool there.


So after toolin around Sylmar I headed over the grapevine. I never realized how close Sylmar was to the grapevine. It wasn't so difficult to drive over it in the vehicle I was driving. I had a Dodge Caravan. I liked it so much that I think my next car will be a van, but not a Dodge, maybe a Ford.

I stopped in a little town and ate at Dennys. And then drove up to Andersons Split Pea Soup place. But I didn't like the prices of the menu or the gift shop. So I made some calls on my cell and hit the road again. I made it to Stockton at about 6 p.m. and called my friends Tracy and Harold in Sacramento. They were expecting me. I spent the night there. I lived in Sac for about 10 years.

Here is a shot of Tracy in the morning before I left.

And her bunny who hangs out in the chicken coup with the chickens.

As I drove out of Sacramento to the cutoff to Jackson, the one thing I noticed was how slow people were driving. So I headed up a road that said "Jackson", which turned into a beautiful highway that goes up to the 49, and then that leads to the 88. I took a few pictures on that road.

My plan, once I got my stuff loaded, was to drive over Carson Pass to Markleeville, stop and eat. And then drive down the Ebbets Pass, which is Highway 4. But that didn't happen. Once I got to Markleeville, I found that the pass was closed, Ebbets Pass, even though there wasn't snow. Thanks Cal Trans. So I had to drive all the way back over Carson Pass, back up the mountain, through Kirkwood again, and then back down the 88 to the 49. And guess what? There was another Cal Trans snafu. They had a road block, to clear bolders off the mountain side. So I got out and took more pictures.
Here is one while waiting at the road block at Carson Pass, which is 8,750 foot elevation.
And when I am that far up, I don't get any cell phone reception. So I can't sit and chat on the phone while I wait. So I took another picture.

I took a few more on the way up to Kirkwood. I think this was along highway 88.
 

After I drove through Jackson, I went through Calaveras county, on the way to Stockton. This was beautiful countryside.

 

I would've taken a lot more pictures than I did, but I had to be in Modesto that night. I had reservations at the Days Inn. And I was tired too.

The only bad part of the trip was when I woke up in the morning at the Days Inn Modesto and someone had smashed the back window out, taking the Singer Sewing machine and a couple of bags of stuff I had. I think maybe those bags had my other belongings in them. But the sewing machine was a good one, given to me by an organization. It bummed me out.
But I got to sleep in a super nice motel room, with a huge bathtub. (I have a bathrub at home too). And I had a Continental breakfast with coffee. And they have high speed Internet to use also. And of course I got to watch cable t.v. I was going to stay there until checkout, which was noon. But once I saw the window, I decided to get on the road, after I made a police report over the phone and called the Hertz place to report it.

I drove down the 99 to the 5, and made it home by 5 p.m. I could feel the temperature get about 10 degrees warmner as I came over the Grapevine and down into Los Angeles. And then the traffic! I got stuck in it. And I was so tired when I got home. I was dizzy. And then for 2 days I was totally exhausted. I was missing my Nala kid so much. When I walked in the door, she came out of the bathroom and mewed twice really fast. She didn't seem upset, but happy to see me. And it made me happy to see her. I thought she'd be ignoring me.

I should've slept the next day, but I had to unload the van and then return it to Hertz. I could tell the manager at Hertz was surprised by how the back window looked. But I'd already called him when it happened and told him about it. I pulled off the road in Fresno and called him. After the vandalism I felt really anxious and nervous, and actually mad as hell.

So it's been a week or so since I've been back. And I just finished unpacking almost everything. Now all I need is to buy some kind of drawers and also bookshelves. As I have to many books and more clothes now.

I got email from my manger saying we'll be going back to work for at least a year, on January 15th, 2012. But he didn't want me to contact anybody else from the team. Because he didn't know how many he'd be needing.

So I've been concentrating on school and working at the library. As soon as I get my final website finished, I'll post the pages here in jog format.