Saturday, Nov 25, 2017

Kanab UT through AZ, NV into CA to Paso Robles takes about 10 hours on the road. We left Kanab early, a little after 7am. Thought we’d have lunch in Las Vegas but arrived there by 9:30. We didn’t want to eat or wait so we continued on.

Stopped for lunch at Peggy Sue’s Diner, a big road-side attraction in Yermo CA. Tons of old-timey Hollywood memorabilia, tiny cramped seating 3 dining rooms deep, with old waitresses in pink and turquoise uniforms running about calling everyone “Hon”. Had a milkshake, burger and fries, explored the gift shop, found a martini-shaking bowling shirt for Jim and back on the road in under an hour. We skipped the visit to the Diner-sauraus out back – next time for sure.

We knew we were in CA by the poor conditions of the road surface, the dollar jump in gas prices and the stopped traffic on the highway. No were else in the country comes even close to our conditions here at home.   

As it was only 3pm by the time we hit Bakersfield, we drove on. Jim didn’t want to drive the final leg via Hwy 5 so we opted to cut over to connect with Hwy 101. Turned out to be a very good decision – as we crossed over Hwy 5, as far as we could see in either direction, was a barely moving, solid-packed ribbon of cars – holiday traffic going home, I guess. We continued on across through the brown fields and hills to the coast while a gorgeous sunset covered the sky.

We knew finding a hotel on a holiday weekend in Paso Robles would be tough so we stopped at the first place on the highway outside of town. La Quinta had one room left - $250 for a king-size suite. We figured this is as good as it’s gonna get. And it is a beautiful suite with 12 foot ceilings and massive 10 foot doors, fully equipped kitchen, electric fireplace with crystal glowing rocks, a balcony with patio seating, a huge walk-in tile shower and 2 sinks and an extremely comfortable bed. We had a cocktail on the balcony, breathed the evening air and reveled in the 80 degree evening. Called out for pizza, Jim picked up a bottle of red at the gift shop and we watched Ironman 3 for our evening’s entertainment. I think Jim wanted a nice dinner in town, but it was just perfect for me.