We had been driving for so long, 4,234 miles actually with many non-stop days to make it our check-points. We had deleted many of our pictures by accident, lost a camera, had a camera die, spilt all kinds of things in my new car, went down one way streets going the opposite way many times, ran a few red lights in the middle of no-where, followed trains that never seemed to end, saw and met people from all over the United States, witnessed rain storms miles away in the desert, saw the vast open sky early morning, high noon, sun-set and a night time. With too many cups of coffee, bad salads, awful radio stations, awesome radio stations, and ipod or two, we were finally coming to the end of our trip.
The desert was hot and dry and so bright. The road from southern Nevada to California is long, boring and full of vast nothingness. I was afraid we were going to run out of gas in the middle of the desert so once we got below half a tank, we tried to fill up in some random small dust bowl town. One time, Haley had to go to the bathroom really bad so we pulled off at the only stop we could find. Thank god I didn't need gas because since this was the only station within like 100 miles, they charged 6$ for unleaded gas and only had 1 bathroom. For some reason, it was full of people, so we found an abandon house and went to bathroom there.
As we waited for hours trying to get past the California check point (for agricultural products and stuff) we were anticipating the "Welcome to California" sign. We had taken pictures of every state welcome sign on our journey and this was going to be our last. After passing through the border, after taking 2 hours, which added another 2 hours onto our journey, we picked the fastest route to San Fran.
We ended up going through huge mountains, then vast deserts, fields full of giant fans for wind energy and then over huge mountains. The roads narrowed and the temperature finally cooled a bit. We switched turns driving because once it became dark, I was the one who usually drove. Haley can't see well at night. Neither can I but I can see a little better. As she napped, I kept looking at the GPS to see how far away we were from San Fran. Only an hour, then 47 minutes, then 32 minutes, then 12 minutes. I woke Haley up as we went over a huge bridge crossing the lower part of the San Francisco Bay. The fog was coming in so it was hard to see much past the bridge. Once we were over the bridge, it was about 5 minutes before we were going to arrive at Joe's brothers house. He lived in a very nice community, tucked away in the forest of Eucalyptus and California pine trees. As we made it to the end of his driveway, all Haley and I could think was how happy we were to be out of the car. But we also realized that this was the end of our journey across the United States and she would be leaving me in about a week.
We looked up and saw Joe standing there with a huge smile on his face. He came over and said "welcome to California, how was the drive?" Joe is full of sarcasm and it was a relief. He helped us inside and Haley and I cleaned up and passed out. In the morning, we went out to see San Francisco and all of her glory.
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