This is the 2000th post on my blog. I’m guesstimating that during this time, I’ve put down approximately 1,000,000 words here so far, which feels like a lot of words to me, in addition to a lot of blog entries. My plan was to write something witty or try to find something profound to say, but my drafts felt that they were whiny laments, so instead, I present something I believe is more fitting for my blog, and that’s the start of another vacation.

We left Phoenix, Arizona, late in the day yesterday and made it to Mojave, California, last night before calling it quits. The hope had been we’d make Bakersfield, but those extra 60 miles became insurmountable. We’d not made the best of time on the road as with the Thanksgiving crush of traffic (and sitting down for a great Mexican dinner at Oyster’s Restaurant in Kingman), it took eight hours to reach Mojave instead of what should have taken six.

The rest of this Thanksgiving Day was spent driving north. A stop at a Starbucks was nearly regretted as while the place certainly looked busy, we would have never guessed that it would take over a half hour to get a couple of drinks. After passing San Francisco, we ran into a couple of hours of rain on the narrower Highway 101, where it curves through forests and forces us to slow down. Fog on stretches of the road also made for slower going. By the time we reached Eureka, California, I was nearing exhaustion from the intense concentration, so it was time for a dinner stop. I have to admit that we were surprised by how many restaurants were serving food but even more surprised by how many businesses were open for early Black Friday shopping.

Over the course of the day, Caroline was reading to us from two different books. The first was “Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes” by Daniel Everett, and the second was “Handywoman” by Kate Davies. Between last night and today, we are nearly halfway through both books. Though it wasn’t planned this way, the two books are somewhat similar in that both deal with loss, one of cultural bearings and the other of the use of half the body due to stroke. Both also deal with new perspectives, though we’ll have to finish them to be able to report just what those outcomes are.

Our overnight was 30 miles short of our desired destination in Brookings, Oregon, but after 700 miles of driving, I found myself too loopy to drive safely up the dark, often foggy, and occasionally rainy coastal highway.