The best made plans sometimes ….

We planned on making a short trip to Sacramento to take some of Tom’s dads’ railroad papers and books to the State RR Museum.  After a crazy Christmas work season, granddaughter, Julie, finally had a few days off and wanted to travel again in the big gray motor home with grandma and grandpa.  Julie is now in her 3rd year at Fresno State University and works part time as well so we do not have many opportunities to travel with her.  Two and a half years ago she went with us for 2 months all the way to the east coast.  We had a great time so this was to be another great adventure. 

The trip started off pretty good; light traffic on Hwy 99 though as always the road is VERY rough.  The first mishap was the fruit bowl bounced it’s way off the counter and broke.  Julie and I cleaned that up while Tom continued driving up 99. 

The next mishap was missing the signs alerting us to Hwy 99 being closed in both directions about 10 miles up the road.  By the time we realized this we were past Hwy 120, the route that would have us avoid that hour and a half delay.  Seems a big rig sideswiped a car, jackknifed the rig and then burst into flames. We followed the line of cars, and trucks big and small at 1 mile/hour for over a hour finally getting off the freeway only to then have to travel through the town of Manteca with these same vehicles all the way to I-5.  Mishap # 3:  While following a car hauler through Manteca, Tom had to use every bit of braking  power on the RV and Jeep to do an emergency stop. All contents in all cupboard and closets were now as forward as they could go and Julie just about joined us in the front of the RV and we almost became another vehicle on the car hauler.  Now that’s something we’ve not experienced in a very long time.  Thank goodness for good brakes.

I guess third times a charm because from then on we had no problems, no emergency stops and no breakages.  We pulled into CalExpo about 3’oclock and got set up in our new home.

We then went shopping at Fry’s. This was Julie’s first trip to the electronics mega store.  We looked at a lot of things and only bought a little 4 gig tiny USB drive for $5 and a set of ear buds for Julie for $5. Good after Christmas sales.

Then we went to Best Buy. After lots of comparisons of tablets, small computers, and i-pad, Julie decided on the i-pad as the only 2 essential apps she must have for school and work only came on the i-pad. It is a pretty nice tablet.  Tom had nothing to do while Julie was closing the deal on the i-pad so he decided on the least expensive Kindle. He liked the size, liked the price to be able to become familiar with the capabilities of the Kindle reader, and will probably buy the second generation of the Kindle Fire when it is released this Spring.

We were so hungry with all this shopping we went to Guy Fieri’s Tex Wasabi. All I can say is BBQ sushi is scrumptious.  We could barely finish the Texas Toast bread pudding smothered in macadamian white chocolate sauce. Julie thought the soapstone sculpture of the Tex Wasabi logo was pretty special.  With her background in Advertising and Design and Marketing she is always noticing this kind of stuff.

 
We came home and played on the new electronic toys.  I continued reading the book recommended by Nick Russell, Redfield Farm, a Kindle e-book set in the 1850’s about a Quaker Family and the Underground Railroad. Excellent read.

Today we did some sorting of the Railroad stuff of Tom’s dad and headed down to the Museum. The curse was still active; the staff at the RR Museum archives were all on vacation for the week between Christmas and New Years.  We did some shopping, sightseeing, and had a delicious lunch at the Delta King.

We got a geocache, fed the parking meter, shopped some more, then went to visit our friends, Irene and Bill Callahan.  Irene recently fell and broke her hip and fractured her elbow and we wanted to wish her well.  We chatted with Bill for a few minutes and were on our way to have dinner with fellow RV’ers Cool Judy and Luke Rinehimer.  We never stopped talking about this and that and even the important stuff like the upcoming Escapee Geocaching event and the FMCA rally.

It sure is hard to post a reasonable short blog when we pack so much into 2 days. Maybe I should blog more often, but then when can I geocache, work on my genealogy, knit, make the bed, clean the rig and occasionally cook? My oh my, a woman’s work is never done.