Friday’s Post Monday

Well, Friday has come and gone and my Friday post remained unwritten. Well, here’s my little story. First, the pre-curser.

A year and a week ago, we were on our way to Oregon to let our daughter borrow our car for a bit. If you know the I5 in California above Sacramento, you may have noticed the Zamora exit. Just before we reached this particular exit, our Honda Element started chugging. We exited and looked up the nearest Honda dealership. It was in Davis, just twenty minutes west. So we limped the car there and got a rental from Enterprise, and went home. We got it fixed a few days later and eventually got the car up to our daughter. Fast-forward from April 2021 to February 2022.

We went up to visit for my birthday in February, and on the way home and we were caught in a blizzard. We had to stop in Ashland to stay the night, and then we had to take the long way home along the coast—a twelve-hour trip. I promise, there is a reason for this reference. Happy birthday to me. At least the drive was through gorgeous redwoods. Fast-forward again to this Mother’s Day weekend.

Friday, we were driving our Lincoln MKT up to Oregon to pick up the Honda. (We were supposed to pick it up the last full weekend in April, because it needed a smog check to renew our registration. My daughter and her husband got COVID two days before the trip. Cancel trip! Pay penalties!) Anyway, back to this trip. They tested negative, so off we traveled to get the Element.

Lo-and-behold, just before the Zamora exit, our MKT began chugging. You’ve got to be kidding me! What are the odds? We pulled off, on now our least favorite exit, to look up Ford/Lincoln dealerships. Another twenty-minute drive to Dixon, next to Davis. We left our MKT, this time, for repairs and rented a truck from Enterprise. Our usual seven and a half-hour drive now, ten hours.

Spent the evening hanging out with our daughter. Awesome time! Saturday we went to the farmer’s market downtown. Super fun, until it started pouring. We all looked like drowned rats by the time we got to our car. Better to laugh than cry. So we laughed. We were barely home for twenty minutes and it started hailing. Glad we made it to our car and home before that, for sure! We enjoyed some family time until our daughter headed to work. My hubby and I chilled at the hotel and took Marion Berry pie over for dessert when she got home from work.

They planned biscuits and gravy for Mother’s Day breakfast, but the weather was looking hinky on Mother’s Day. We headed over to say our goodbyes, as we needed to get a good start on the road. My hubby left to fill up the car, and it started snowing. In May. Really? Again? Well, we took off about half an hour later. It snowed and rained off and on as far south as Yreka, where it was sunny and snowing. Hmmm. Then, we hit a pretty heavy windstorm.

We dropped off the rental in Davis, and united, once again in our Element, continued our trip. Thirty minutes before we would have made it home, traffic slowed to a stop. There, ahead of us, on a bridge, was an accident. We turned around after thirty minutes and headed the long way home. Did I mention it was the rush hour in the Bay Area? Thirty minutes later, we stopped for dinner. Then we made our way back to the bridge. All was clear, just residual traffic. Again, our trip took us ten hours.

That’s my story. Hope to have a better story for you this Friday. Cheers! And avoid Exit Zamora! 🙂