Day 17: Roseburg, OR to Home

The previous day saw us travel from Sacramento to Roseburg, OR. Dad had research some of the hotels in the area and found that the Holiday Inn had the best beds around, and by the 16th night on the road we were going to need them. True to form, they were quite nice; allowing for a delicious night's sleep.

The next morning we went for a walk/run around town. Dad got lost (he says he was given bad directions by a local) and so never got to walk the winding trail that parallels the Umpqua River, instead he did his own meandering about the highways and byways of little Roseburg. After a bit we returned to the hotel and hopped in the Jacuzzi that overlooked the river. Oddly enough, the warmest, sunniest weather we experienced the whole trip was to be found, not in Arizona or LA, but Roseburg, Oregon. Go figure!

After contemplating whether we should stay an extra day because the accomodations were so nice, we decided Mom would probably kill us if we were this close and didn't come home. So for the last time we packed the car, gased up and hit the road.

We picked up some traffic going through Portland and Seattle (naturally) and rolled into home a little after 9pm. After 5538 miles, 17 days, and a treasure chest full of experiences we were finally home.

(Photo note: fingers= 5-5-3-5 miles and home safe, sound and not saddle sore.....good job Honda!!!)

Day 15 & 16: Weimar Institute (NE Sacramento)

At this point in our trip, both Dad and I could start to taste the Pacific Northwest. We were only a couple days out and looking forward to being home. But first we needed to stop in on one of dad's old high school and post-college buddies, Rocco Maccaroni and his wife Tina. Rocco and Tina work at a Seventh Day Adventist Health camp called Weimar. Rocco is one of the chefs and Tina works in their recruitment and alumni connections.

As per our usual way of doing things, we blew in late, and briefly touched base with them. They have a cafeteria where everyone can eat, but it's at 7:30 in the morning. I don't think Dad and I got up once during the entire trip at 7:30. Oh well, if we wanted to eat, we gotta get up. Seventh Day Adventists and this group in particular eat a very strict diet, mostly vegan. The purpose of Weimar is basically to provide a dietary detox center for people who often have severe health issues and get them eating and living healthy. As a result everything is plant-based and nothing is processed or refined. And so for the two days we were there we ate a lot of oatmeal for breakfast, salad and rice with a vegetable sauce for lunch and dinner consisted of salad and soup. [And the food was amazingly delicious... thanks Rocco.]

Some of the people who have come to Weimar with deadly health complications (diabetes, artheritis, wieght probloems, clogged arteries, etc) go through the 18 day program and come out the other side with signficant improvements in their health. One guy had just had a quadruple heart bypass, type 2 diabetes and taking 7 medications just to stay alive. He went through the program, dropped 80 pounds, now only needs 1 of his meds and is enjoying an active live. Hearing some of the testimonies from folks there was quite impressive.

We had a great time hanging with Rocco and Tina as Dad and Rocco told stories, reminisced and caught up. It's always nice to hear somebody elses side of the story after years of dad's take on some of their shinanigans as kids :)[Dad rarely exaggerates, Colin. :) ]

One of our cousins attends UC Davis and is on the girls basketball team. The University is just outside of Sacramento so one eveing dad and I took Heidi Heintz out for dinner and toured her campus. Very cool. And the next evening as we left Weimar and Sacramento, we dropped in on another cousin, Molly Gowan who is going to school in Redding, CA. And then we were on our way to Roseburg, OR.

Day 13 & 14: City of the Angeles

Heading to LA we got caught twice, first in traffic in the middle of the day, duh, welcome to LA and the other was in a torrential down pour the likes of which have rarely been seen this side of the Amazon! That might be pushing it, but it was crazy! We sloweddown to 30 mph on the freeway and almost had to pull over, despite the windshield wipers go wacko. In the midst of attempting to stay afloat in the rushing river that was I-5, we missed our exit (for the record, California exit signs suck! They often don't have the exit numbers on them and don't give proper advance notice, instead it's just like "oh, exit Here, NOW!" and you have no idea if this is taking you to your destination or on some wide goose chase of which the probability of finding your way back is minute.

Anyhow, I digress. We eventually got to Fuller, had our interviews, and landed in our apartment. I have several friends living in LA, so that evening and over the next day, pretty much hung out with them (shout out to Lish, Rach, Harminization and The Duke) which was a blast. We went down to Huntington and Santa Monica Beaches and walked the Pier, chilled in Pasadena and toured the inner school where one of my friends worked.

Dad worked on Stuff...

Tomorrow we continue North to Sacramento and will drop in on one of dad's high school and post college buddies, Rocco Maccaroni and his wife Tina at the Weimar Institute.

Day 12: San Diego

After our short stay in Tucson, we made our final push for the West Coast and San Diego. Unlike most of our travel days where we put in 8 to 10 hours on the road, getting to San Diego took less than 6, which was nice. We passed through several border patrol checkpoints with little hassle and got into town in time to go down to Little Italy in SD and dine at an old family friends restaurant. Our friends the Zizzos, who used to live in our neighborhood, have an Italian Restaurant called Vincenzo and my childhood friend, Anthony is the head chef. And the food is AMAZING!!! Honestly some of the best my dad or I have ever eaten. Anthony has gone to Sicily on a couple of occassions to study under some of the best chefs over there and my clam linguine and dad's Alaska Salmon were both delicious. Dad and I got the spend some time with Anthony and his mom, JoJo which was great since I had not seen them since high school when they were up for a family reunion.

We stayed in nice hotel, The Hacienda, in old town, SD and toured some of the historic missions and shops that line the street. After which we made our way north to Los Angeles since both of us had meetings with Fuller Theological Seminary, and were staying in their guest housing. Pops had a recuiting meeting with them and since we were there I figured/dad encouraged, it wouldn't hurt to do a academic interview and see what they are all about.

Los Angeles, oh city of a ridiculous amount of people, cars and smog, here we, reluctantly, come (an unenthusiastic "yeah" follows).

Day 10 & 11: Carlsbad Caverns and Tucson

From San Antonio, we made our way across the wide-open prairie of West Texas (read boring, dead, flatlands). As per our usually schedule, we finally made it out of San Antonio late, about 3pm and so our anticipated arrival at White’s City, just outside of Carlsbad National Park, was stupid o-clock (as uncle Brian puts it) or after 12.

Crossing Texas, we noticed that the wind was picking up substantially, 30-40 mph gusts, with the dead trees swaying and sagebrush bouncing across the road. Sure enough, we found ourselves in the middle of a sand storm, with visibility at times reduced to only a couple hundred yards. I was glad we hadn’t got the car painted before we left DC, now I just got a sanding job, for free!
Also, in the midst of the wind, we discovered a large wind farm and the wind was blowing so hard that we could see the turbines shut down. It was very interesting.

Most of our travel was at night and after stopping at Subway for dinner (we did try to eat somewhat healthy or at least augment the amazingly tasty but horrible for you meals we had been enjoying) we continued on to New Mexico. As we passed through Pecos, TX dad was chatting with a friend of ours, Dale Kreider, and he thought that Judge Roy Bean’s courthouse was in Pecos. No sooner had he mentioned it then we drove right past it! The timing was amazing.

Dad had been packing around his sleeping bag and a tent since the beginning of the trip, thinking we were going to get a chance to use it once or twice. One of the stops was going to be Carlsbad, but with us getting in after midnight and the sand storm swirling about, we nixed that and booked a room (we never did use the darn thing).

The next morning we got up about 8:15 and realized if we wanted to make one of the earlier tours of the caverns we had to be there by 9. Dressing ourselves as we flew out the door, we inhaled breakfast a nice little restaurant next door and weaved our way up to the caverns. The tour was AWESOME! It was a guided tour and done only with candle-lit lanterns, to give us the feel of what it would have been like discovering the cavse as early explorers. The chemical compositions of the stalactites and stalagmites and all of the scientific and geological variables that go into the creation of caverns are fascinating. Sooo… after enjoying that so much we decided to run back down to our room, check out, and then go back for another tour, this time of the Big Room, which is around 600,000 square feet.

We finished with Carlsbad around 2pm and hit the road once again, this time for Tucson, AZ. We passed through El Paso, TX and were surprised to discover how large it is (700,000 people) and just across the border in Ciudad Juarez are another 2 million people. And many border patrol folks and check points,. Between Carlsbad and Tucson is a high desert area, which, though very dry, is actually quite beautiful, with the varying kinds of cactus, which do have flowers. We landed at the home Bill and Julie Odom (missionary friends) and camped there (on hide-a-beds) for the night and enjoyed their great hosptiality.

Tomorrow we head for sunny California and then make our way north.