{"id":668,"date":"2016-09-23T16:09:48","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T16:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=668"},"modified":"2019-12-08T22:33:42","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T22:33:42","slug":"monday-september-19-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/09\/23\/monday-september-19-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, September 19 Home!"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>Avis is the only car rental company that does not charge a dropoff fee for one-way rentals, so that’s where our friend took us this morning at the Portland Airport.\u00a0 We ended up with a new gray Kia, and as Bill put it, “flogged that poor horse” as fast as we dared, all the way back to Petaluma.\u00a0 It’s a very familiar route along Interstate 5, and made us feel as if we really were headed home.<\/p>\n

Back in California at last, the rice harvest was underway in the Sacramento Valley, and it was hot!\u00a0 97 degrees!\u00a0 What a change from the cold in northern Montana!<\/p>\n

But once we were back near San Francisco Bay, it cooled down, and what a joy to come back into Petaluma and see our house again, looking OK.\u00a0 Inside, I expected to see spider webs and dust bunnies everywhere, but no–everything was fine.\u00a0 But we had no time to waste–we needed to return the Kia to Avis at the Santa Rosa Airport.<\/p>\n

So we started up one of our other cars, and drove in the sunset light, then the dark, till we finally located Avis (not easy) and turned in the Kia.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time we got home again, it was after 10:00 pm.\u00a0 Tired doesn’t even come near describing how we felt, but we stopped off to pick up some artisan bread, cheese and fruit for a late supper, California style.<\/p>\n

Home.\u00a0 We are finally home.\u00a0 The CDT is almost like a dream–but we still have lots of scratches, bruises and sore muscles to prove that we really did do it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And thank you, thank you, Father God, for walking with us all the way!<\/p>\n

DETAILS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Our friend John gave us a ride to the Avis car rental at the Portland Airport.\u00a0 Good thing he is a Portlander–he knew a way to avoid the commute traffic!\u00a0 Avis is the only car rental company that does not charge a horrendous fee for one-way rentals.\u00a0 Good for them!\u00a0 We ended up with a cute gray KIA “Sportage”, and we left the airport at around 8:30 am with one goal:\u00a0 Make it to the Santa Rosa, CA airport BEFORE 9:30 pm!\u00a0 That meant we really had to push it.\u00a0 Fixit drove as fast as he dared.\u00a0 “I’m really flogging this poor horse”, he said.<\/p>\n

It was cloudy and chilly, even foggy, through most of the Willamette Valley.\u00a0 We could not see the Cascades at all, and could not even see the Coast Range, not even Mary’s Peak, which is a sizeable mountain west of Corvallis.\u00a0 We cheered when we saw several new hazelnut orchards along I-5–that means more nuts to make Nutella, which we ate gobs of on the trail!\u00a0 The tall, beautiful oak and maple trees had just a hint of fall color, unlike the full-on brilliance of fall foliage in Montana.<\/p>\n

By 11:00 we were starving hungry and made a pit stop at Subway for sandwiches, before pushing on.\u00a0 As we got into the Siskiyou mountains of southern Oregon, the clouds began to lift, and by the time we reached the CA border, the sun was out and the sky was blue.\u00a0 All the rivers we crossed–the Umpqua, the Klamath, the Sacramento–seemed to be running well, with plenty of water.\u00a0 And best of all, the forests were GREEN–no beetle kill!\u00a0 No miles and miles of gray, dead trees, like we saw in Colorado, Wyoming and even Montana.<\/p>\n

Down from the mountains, then into the Sacramento Valley, where there were many new orchards, mostly of nuts–almonds, pistachios and walnuts, plus new vineyards.\u00a0 The rice harvest was underway, and the rice paddies were a beautiful shade of gold and green.\u00a0 The sunflower fields were already harvested, and so was the corn.\u00a0 I love looking at all the different crops and watching what’s happening on the farms.\u00a0 It was HOT, though–97 degrees.\u00a0 What a change from the chill of northern Montana!<\/p>\n

Finally we were able to head west on I-80, and we cheered again when we spotted the blue of San Francisco Bay, and soon we were back in Sonoma County with its vineyards and farms, then finally on our own street, and into our own driveway.\u00a0 My first thought was, “Whew, the garden survived!”\u00a0 But we had no time to waste.\u00a0 We tossed our packs into the house, took a deep breath, prayed, and….our own car, which had been just sitting all summer, started right up!\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 The sun was going down, and we still had quite a way to go before we would be at the Santa Rosa Airport.\u00a0\u00a0 Fixit drove off in the KIA, with me following, and before long, we were driving in the dark, heading north.<\/p>\n

When we reached the airport, we had an awful time trying to figure out where to go, where to turn in the KIA.\u00a0 It was almost 9:00 pm, and nobody was around in the rental car parking areas.\u00a0 Finally we figured it out, got the KIA squared away, and FINALLY we were REALLY headed HOME.\u00a0 It was 10:00 pm by the time we were back in Petaluma, but we stopped off to grab food for a California supper–artisan bread, cheese, fruit.\u00a0 We scarfed it up and collapsed into our own bed.\u00a0 What’s weird is that our whole CDT summer just seemed like a dream.\u00a0 Did we really do it?\u00a0 Well, the proof was we were bone-thin, full of scratches and bruises, and very tired.\u00a0 Yes, we DID it!<\/p>\n

Thank you, Lord!\u00a0 It was great!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 Avis is the only car rental company that does not charge a dropoff fee for one-way rentals, so that’s where our friend took us this morning at the Portland Airport.\u00a0 We ended up with a new gray Kia, and as Bill put it, “flogged that poor horse” as fast as we dared, all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preparation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}