California Dreamin'

While probably not the wisest thing I did on our long-haul drive, I managed to make it not just into California, but all the way to Bakersfield to start our day heading northwest.  I realized once I'd made it to California, we had a lot of desert between us and the coast, so I pushed on, long into the night, so we wouldn't have to do it all.day.long.

The good thing is the kids are good sleepers - even after waking at 4:00 AM to get into the hotel room, they were back to sleep in no time and stayed asleep until 10:00 AM, which meant I did manage to get in six hours before getting up and getting started on our day.

Decisions, decisions - head north for Oregon, or head west to the coast, then head north?

We opted to head west and take the Pacific Coast Highway (road) up the coastline toward our hoped for destination tonight, Monteray!

The good - it was a beautiful drive!  Perfect weather and awesome views.

The bad - it was long, long, long for the kids.  In the future, given a similar choice, I'd opt to head right up to Monteray and back-track down the coast a bit if we wanted to see it, otherwise it's too long a drive with kids, with very few opportunities for stops and burning off energy.

When we did finally roll into Monteray, it was well worth the wait.

After a couple of hours exploring the area, we had dinner and then pushed off to our overnight destination, now Santa Cruz since Monteray was over the budget - way over!