Long Drive Home

We woke up and hit the road, knowing we had over 450 miles of President’s Day traffic to get through to get home. Around mid-morning, we pulled into Encinitas to have breakfast. While waiting at the stop light, I noticed our car was literally smoking.

We pulled into a small, nice cafe, and figured we’d eat while the car cooled down. We called Cho for advice on what to do. He suggested we pour some water into the radiator, and immediately drive to a gas station to get it looked at.

As it was a holiday, and also we couldn’t drive far, we pulled into the first gas station, where an extremely helpful and friendly gentleman behind the counter advised us on what coolant to purchase, and helped us out. Our car was smoking again, despite only driving about a mile to the gas station. But once the coolant was in, our car was fine- except that it was leaking fluids slowly.

Hitting the road, we got slown down by horrendous LA (and outskirts traffic). 4 hours later we had reached the grapevine outside LA. The car was smoking again so we put in fluids and continued. We repeated this a bunch of times throughout the drive home.

After Highway 5, we stopped at the 152 junction for some dinner and a final pouring of liquids into the car. This enabled us to finally get home, pretty exhausted.

Despite being tired, we both thought the trip to San Diego was wonderful.

Some random musings following this trip:

• I’ve finally driven the entire length of Highway 1. It’s not terribly exciting in SoCal; in fact, I hope never to have to drive it again.
• This is it for California lighthouses for me. It’s time to shift over to Washington state.
• By rough estimate, I’ve driven 1005 miles of California coast. This includes most of the Lost Coast (not all accessible), and includes the CA-OR border as well as the Mex-CA border. That’s the entire California coastline.
• It’s amazing how many times we’ve gone off the roads, over the years, into little nooks and crannies just to try to see the entire coastline.
• Perhaps one of these years I’ll walk/camp the entire Lost Coast.
• Now that I’ve seen it all, the Mendocino coast is definitely my favorite part of the state’s coastline.
• Southern California feels like a different state (if not country) altogether. The weather is totally different, and people seem totally different. Not in a bad way different, just not like NorCal. Much slower, much more tanned, much more laid back. And yet, having to cope with horrendous traffic and perpetually hot weather, even in the Winter. Though not cut out for me, I can see why people- especially those who love the sun and warm outdoors- love SoCal.
• The Southern California coastline is very sandy, full of beaches, and is more oriented to people spending time there as compared to the northern coast.