Today is the last day of this very trip. We get up at 8AM. It’s because I didn’t figure out how to shut the sun blocking curtain, so the bright sunshine comes to hour hotel room early. Monkeys are energetic like never been on a road trip in previous couple of days. We give them 30 mins of TV time. A bonus of staying in quality hotel is that you have good TV service for kids. So you can lay back at the bed and enjoy your hair to dry after shower.
Because there’s a long drive coming, so we decide to give kids as much delight as we can at morning. We suit them in swimsuit and heads down to swimming pool. The pool is not ready, the pool staff are cleaning the pool by putting new chemicals into the water. He is kind enough to let the kids in the pool room and waiting there. Cleaning pool water is a science, the staff have lots of colorful bottles like a wizard and doing math on paper. He told us that you need certificate for this job and math is very important. After his calculation he told us we need to wait another 15 mins.
When kids can drop themselves into the pool, it’s almost 10AM. There’s another family from Gilroy shared the pool with us. And they have a inflated duck, Flora got a chance to play with it.
Kids loves pool, they enjoy playing with water. And time flies by, we finish the pool hour at 11AM. The hotel’s checkout time is 12PM, so it’s 1 hour pack time. My wife did that already because she didn’t spend the whole hour with us at the pool.
To be honest, indoor pool is cleaner but not as colorful as outdoor pool. The pool staff told us indoor pool is harder to maintain than outdoor one because of high humidity and harder ventilation.
My wife drive the first 2 hours. We see the beautiful Mount Shasta along the drive, and then found couple of attractions we’d like to enjoy in future road trips.
The first stop is at nowhere, after 1.5 hour of drive we found a stop of truck drivers. It’s a little wood house looks very old outside. And it looks even older inside, dark and creepy. There’s truck driver sitting in middle of the room enjoy a meal while watching TV. We used the bathroom and found a dressed plastic model in the bathtub. Hannah is scared by this place and refuse to use the bathroom. I encouraged her couple of times and blocking her view to that creepy model so she can finish her job. The owner of this little shop must have good humor and proud of golden time of truck transporting. We took some cane sugar coka-cola and chips and hit the road again.
Then we had a lunch stop at Redding, CA, and had a lunch at Woody’s brewing, every town have their own brewery. We switched driver after the stop. The weather is melting hot, we are glad that we stay in a air conditioned car.
The whole drive back via I5 took around 6 hours. And we had some Chinese food at Milpitas as a conclusion of the day.
This journal is written 2 weeks after we finish the trip.
