Highway to Hell or Homeward Bound

Friday, Sept 12th we drove back to the heat in Phoenix, which wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. The monsoon seems to be losing its grasp and the drier air is returning making for more pleasant evenings (80 instead of 90 degrees).

The hotel in Ventura, The Crowne Plaza, was a huge disappointment. I was under the impression that The Crowne Plaza in general were fancy hotels and thought that we would have a really nice room and view. Well, the room needed some help. The tub, carpet and easy chair were stained and filthy and the mirror in the bathroom had chipping paint on it. The bathroom was super small with no counter space for anything. The hallway was noisy, we could hear the elevator and everyone who walked by. The view was mostly of the parking garage next door. You had to look out at the west side of the window to see the beach, pier and ocean. There were hippies or homeless people sitting on the sidewalk below blaring a portable radio and singing along very loudly at 8pm in the evening. Finally, we took a walk out to the pier to see if we could get pictures of a nice sunset and the pier was pretty gross. The people were weird and when they caught fish, left fish pieces on the pier. Oh, and the railroad track was about 50 feet from the hotel and we could hear the trains blowing their whistle at 4am. Sucked.

We had breakfast at a Denny's for bikers (well, it wasn't that bad, we were the only ones without tattoos though :)) and left Ventura at about 10am. We drove across the 101 then the 134, 210 then 10 (maybe there was another one in there too). Could California have more freeways? Probably. Ridiculous. Besides all of that, the drive was pretty uneventful.

We woke up with fog and overcast skies and didn't have clear skies until we were past Palm Springs, though I think it was dusty there and not fog. We drove around looking for a place to eat lunch again (we did this the last time we were in Palm Springs/Indio). Where do these people eat? After about an hour, we found a few places on the other side of the freeway, of course. Stupid town.

I was glad to see the Arizona desert again. As much as I get sick of the heat, I still love the desert with its clear blue and dry skies and distant mountains.

We made it into Phoenix just as rush hour was ending, thank goodness, and arrived home at about 6:30pm. It was too late to pick up the dogs from their boarding, so we had some dinner, unpacked, cleaned California off of us and went to bed.

Overall, we had a great time but wish that we had at least another week. That was a lot of driving for two weeks and we didn't get to see as much stuff as we would have liked to.

We drove 3,100 miles across 3 states and only had to buy 70 gallons of gas! :) Our little Prius averaged 45 mpg! We saw a ton of Prius's in northern California and several people asked us about it too. They also liked our little license plate holder - "It ain't easy being green." :) One couple who asked us about our Prius while we were in Morro Bay was from Moon Valley in Phoenix! :) Pretty funny.