Road Trip To California

We are making a quick road trip down to California and what may be one of the final times we ever have a need to go back to our hometowns of Merced and Atwater, California. The last remaining connection to California is my mother-in-law's home in Atwater. Atwater is a small agricultural community located in central California. Its biggest claim to fame is that it was once the site of Castle Air Force Base which closed down in the late 80's, early 90's. Now it is home to a prison, the billing headquarters for Cingular/ATT cellular, an air museum (a vestige of the old base) and not much else. A photo of the SR-71 Blackbird at the museum is pictured at right. We need to go there to check out the house and see what can be done to sell it. So for the next 7 days, we will be on the road and mostly dealing with mom's house. But in between we will have some fun.

Today, day 1: Monday, July 30th we left Bellingham about 8:00 am and drove south along I-5. We stopped in Portland to get gas and then on to Albany Oregon where we met Carolyn and Sam Darby, very old family friends, for lunch. We met them at Novak's, a famous Hungarian restaurant there in town. We have eaten there before and loved it. We had a great time catching up with Sam and Carolyn's adventures traveling all over the world. They are both well into their retirement years but just don't seem to be slowing down. The food at Novaks was a disappointment. We remembered it being so much better. Anyway, another hour and a half and we arrived at our first day destination of Roseburg, Oregon. That is where I am right now writing this to you. We are staying at the Quality Inn (picture on the right) where we were upgraded to a suite so it is a nice room.

Tomorrow we travel on to our final destination--Atwater, California, our hometown. I will keep you informed about our adventures along the way so stay tuned!