Drive to Sacramento, stayed in a craphole, sort of

We drove from Santa Clarita to Sacramento, CA today. We drove past Magic Mountain on the way out, so I had to take some pics of that. The air was super humid and hazy, unfortunately, but probably typical.

Then we headed up I-5 for the long haul. I haven't been across California in my adult life before, so this was a semi-new experience. Most people would think it was boring, but since it was new to me, I thought it was interesting. I've never seen so many miles and miles of agriculture before! I'm not even sure what all was being grown. There were millions of almond trees and citrus trees. Then I think we saw some cotton and pumpkin fields. We also smelled an onion field. Whew that cleared the sinuses! There were also lots of trucks hauling all of this stuff. Here's a pic of one hauling tomatoes.

The traffic was pretty crazy too. Not sure if it is like this all the time or if this was Labor Day traffic. Lots of RV's, trucks and SUV's. The temps were pretty nice, in the upper 70s to upper 80s all day, but the wind was pretty bad in places. We were really rocking and rolling and we were only driving a little Prius! I'm glad we didn't have anything bigger!

We found a great place for my sister, Los Banos! :) Why would someone name a place that? Did they not know Spanish? Maybe they were being honest, it is just a pit stop.

We finally made it to Sacramento around 4pm and checked into our hotel. This reservation was the whole reason we even looked at staying at Super 8 Hotels, otherwise I would have never bothered. Super 8 was having a special deal for 8 days that started on 8/8/08 at 8pm EST for the first 800 people who made reservation online. The rooms were only $8.88! You can't beat that. Well, the hotels are just ok. I guess we're spoiled after staying at $150 a night hotels, so we weren't impressed. The Sacramento room is clean and has nice bedding and fixtures, but the room is very small, there is no place to put our luggage, there is a huge gap in the door. Yes, the door is actually closed completely in that picture. And the microwave and refrigerator are stuffed into the bathroom area so that you can't even open the doorway all the way. The odd thing in the room was the huge jacuzzi bathtub in the bathroom. I needed a step ladder to get into the thing! The worst part is that the reservations were for a suite and the hotel clerk claimed that the room was not available. He couldn't figure out how we were able to get this room for only $8.88, so I think that he didn't want to give it to us. Well, I didn't feel like arguing about it since it was so cheap.

So the rest of the night we cancelled our Super 8 reservations in Medford, OR and Fort Bragg, CA and found new reservations at better places. I can't deal with this crap anymore. No more crapholes! :) So we will eat our crappy free breakfast in the morning and get the crap out of here! I'm going to have to take some Tylenol PM so I can sleep throught all the traffic noise coming through the gap in the door. It sounds like the door is open.

OMG, I think a skunk is in the parking lot! It stinks in here, and it's not us! It didn't smell like that earlier. Hopefully it will go away.

I forgot to mention that we stopped in Santa Nella and ate at Pea Soup Andersen's on a tip from my parents. The pea soup was actually good! Well, I liked it, Mike didn't.