and home...

Vacation was fun, but exhausting. I can't remember the last time I spent that much time in the passenger seat of a car. A grand total of nearly 40 hours on the road.

There is not a damn thing to be said for Eureka, CA. It's an ugly shithole. It was nothing more than a waypoint for us. Had I known how shitty Eureka has become, I probably would have toughed out another couple hours on the road and stayed somewhere further in, but we were tired. It seemed like a decent enough place to park it for the night. We were whooped from 12 hours on the road and wanted nothing more than to park it, grab a pitcher, a meal, and crash.

San Francisco was great, but would have been more so if we didn't have to pack a bunch of activity into about a day and a half. Trish has never been to California, so we did all the usual tourist stuff: Alcatraz, dinner down by the grotto, shopping in Union Square, went to Golden Gate park, drove down Lombard "the crookedest street in the world". Trish didn't care for the city's color scheme, I thought it gave it warmth. I like the hispanic influence on the architecture. I thought it gave the city a lot of character. I forgot how pretty Sonoma county is, driving on the way in with all of the vibrant colors: the red rocks and soil contrasted with the desert flowers, and vinyards. I really like the energy of San Francisco. My only problem with SF proper was and still is that the city feels very compressed. I almost felt claustrophobic. SF makes me think of what Seattle would be like if you were to remove lake union, the ship canal, and portage bay, then squish Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, Fremont, Ballard, wallingford, and the U-Dist all together, make all roads two-lane, and remove every left turn arrow in the city.

Butch clearly did not enjoy himself in San Francisco. I've never seen him so stressed out just being somewhere other than home before. The lack of trees, grass, and shrubbery in the city was kind of a pain, considering that he will only relieve himself on grass or bushes. He managed to get by and very early saturday we began on our way up to Yachats . He was much happier there. The atmosphere was much more his style and he had a big beach to run around on.

Day 1 in yachats, we got quite a bit of quality beach time in. You couldn't ask for a better view. I could literally throw a rock in the ocean from our back porch. We spent both nights with the deck door open, listening to the waves. Butch got to run his ass off and let out some pent up frustration of sitting in cars, motel rooms, and walking around a city he wasn't having much fun in. Later, Trish and I decided we had entirely too much money at our disposal, so we went to check out a casino in Florence, who gladly relieved us of some of it. It was kind of depressing. I was playing craps with a very simple strategy that had me up $70 at one point. The table ultimately went cold and I wound up taking it in the shorts about $45. I really need to learn when to walk away from a cold table.

The next day we woke up quite early. Trish took butch down on the beach to play for a little bit. Later, she came back and we went out to breakfast, got some pictures, and explored the nearby coast a little bit, and checked out a little market thing they had going on in town. Trish bought a necklace, I got some native american flute thing I thought was kinda neato looking. Also, it's bamboo and sounds a lot like a shakuhachi, but is less difficult to play (or blow into anyhow, you have to play a shakuhachi like a trumpet, this thing actually has a mouthpiece). Mid afternoon, I took a nap, Trish took butch for another beach trip, came back and spent the rest of the afternoon laying on the deck, drinking wine, and listening to reggae. I got up a little later, we went for mexican food later, came back, watched a movie and called it a night.

Yesterday we got up and headed out around 7:30 and made another 10+ hour trek home, stopping at a few points along the way for photos. We got breakfast in Lincoln City, Butch got one last little bit of play time on Arcadia Beach (just south of Cannon Beach), Trish got pics of the rock formations. We stopped again in Cannon Beach so Trish could get more pictures of big rocks and continued home. We hit some really nasty traffic in Olympia that set us back about 45 min.

One of the funniest things on the trip was the look on Butch's face when we got off the exit near home at lakeview blvd. His ears perked up and he got this big grin, noticing something that looks familiar. Today, he either seems really depressed or worn out. Probably a bit of both. He was a bit stressed out for much of the trip, but it was probably a bit exciting seeing new things, now he's back to normal life at home.