Last stop- San Francisco!
We made it! We actually made it! After 21 days on the road, we finally made it to our last destination. The day, of course, wouldn’t be a true road trip day without plenty of mishaps along the way.
We got up early to have our breakfast, a morning campfire (nothing beats that) and some showers before packing up our campsite and getting on the road. Also, I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures.
Of course, Meghan had to take a picture with this bad boy. Side note, Meghan ALWAYS gets pictures of us in these. No matter where we go, if she sees one, it needs to happen.
As we got on the road, the GPS said that it was going to be about 5 hours to San Francisco. We realized that it had us going along a different route than the coast, so we recalculated it to take us down 101 and Route 1. This added an extra hour to the trip, but that seemed well worth it for the view of the ocean. With a 6 hour drive ahead of us (1. still not bad 2. so we thought), we eagerly started driving.
Once 101 met up with route 1, we took the turn to head out towards the coastline. Little did we know, that we were entering extremely windy roads for the remainder of the trip. The hairpin turns that continued to weave in and out of the mountains meant that we had to drive at very low speeds and that both of us constantly felt sick. They also meant that my car was going stop and go up and down and around mountains. At a few points, my car started overheating (although that happened a little in South Dakota too) so we pulled over and let it cool a bit. Background: My car is a 2004 Honda C-RV with 232,000+ miles on it. Going into the trip, we knew that this would most likely be the last hoorah for my car and that we were even nervous it wouldn’t make it all the way. This info is important for later on in the day.
Finally, we got to the coast and continued the windy path for the rest of the drive, but it was a bit easier with such a killer view.
In the picture above, you can see the road on the left. To get there, we circled down the mountain we were currently on only to turn and go up the next ridge. This sums up the drive pretty well. The crazy parts would be where the car is on the edge, no room for shoulder and all you can see is down to the rocks and the water. It was definitely a beautiful drive, but perhaps one I would only make once.
We stopped for lunch in Fort Bragg and found this cute restaurant called Cafe 1. They were about to close, but thankfully took us in anyway (so thankful, we were so hungry). What seemed like a diner dive from the outside was actually the pick for organic cafes on the coast. I’m a pretty picky eater and typically struggle at places like this as I scour the menu for food I know and like. After a few once overs on the menu, I settled on a chicken quesadilla with a variety of other organic foods stuffed inside. It was really good and came with super fresh pico de gallo, which I can never pass up. Meghan had a carrot ginger soup with a sandwich. She also reports that her food was wonderful. She’s definitely more into the organic scene than I am so she was a happy camper with the menu.
For the next 1098342359085 hours, we continued driving down the coast. It seriously felt as though the drive was never going to end. After the sunset over the water part 2, we kept checking the GPS and it continued to say that San Francisco was an hour and 20 minutes away. It said this for over 3 hours so I’m not sure what was happening there. Meghan doesn’t like to drive in the city so I kept putting off her driving thinking that we were only an hour out. Needless to say, I ended up driving for about 11 hours. I was EXHAUSTED.
Finally, in the distance, we saw the first lights appear. Suddenly, I was no longer driving along the windy coastline, but rather driving on the insanely busy freeway going over the Golden Gate Bridge. I may have been squealing loudly as we went over the bridge, partly out of excitement and partly out of stress with all the commotion and cars. Our hotel is in Oakland, but I had wanted to go over the bridge and thought it would simply dump onto another highway to take us to Oakland, so we drove into San Francisco. I had no idea that it would dump me into the streets of downtown San Francisco. The moment quickly turned into some panic as we were driving in the dark through the very busy streets of San Fran.
This continued to become more stressful as my car began to overheat worse than it ever had before. If you’ve never seen San Francisco, the streets are pretty much vertical and so my car was not doing well with stop and go traffic on steep hills. I ended up pulling over with my flashers on (a daunting task in a city) and having an acute meltdown as the temperature gauge moved into the red. Since my knowledge of cars extends to not much, I had no idea how to deal with this and the first look up on Google proved not to be very helpful (as I didn’t have access to coolant and I have no idea what the radiator is anyway). We waited for a bit for the car to cool before trying once again and I quickly had to pull over again as the car went into the red. My second Google search produced much more helpful results which I will share if you ever need to cool your car sans coolant or water. What I learned and consequently did was turn the car on, open the windows, turn the air conditioner off and turn the heat on as high as it would blast. I then kept the car in park and revved the engine. I’m not sure if this always works for every situation, but it worked in that moment and I watched the gauge quickly fall back to normal. We continued driving (with the heat on and windows open) until we got to our hotel. Up until this point, I thought sleeping outside was the most difficult moment. This experience, however, definitely stole the cake. It was not the way I wanted to end our trip, but I’m so grateful that the car made it and that everything was okay.
We checked into the hotel and went on our final road trip mission: In-n-Out Burgers.
Meghan has had them before, but I had not and I have heard nothing but amazing things about this burger experience. There was one nearby so we got in the car and drove the 10 minutes (with the heat on still to keep the car cool). We then waited in a drive thru line for about 40 minutes for these burgers. 40 minutes. Longest I’ve ever waited before.
For my first experience I got a Double Double, chocolate milkshake, and fries animal style. I have no real idea what any of that means besides the shake, but it was so good. The Double Double is double meat and double cheese along with their secret sauce, tomato, and lettuce. It was the messiest burger I’ve ever eaten in my life, but it was delicious. The fries- animal style- included the secret sauce, grilled onions, and cheese. Most certainly worth the wait and it was the perfect ending to our road trip.
There will be more of this in my future- I will need to moderate.
We finished our food at 11:59pm and Meghan was the first one to wish me a Happy Birthday at midnight. We had great timing for this trip. The first day was our 4 year anniversary and our last moment was the start of my birthday. I can’t believe that we made it. I can’t believe that we are on the opposite side of the country from most of our families and our friends. I also can’t believe that the vacation portion of this is over and we are moving into the reality portion of this adventure. I’m filled with tons of gratitude that we were able to do this and that we have had almost all positive moments with only a few stressful pieces tossed throughout. I look forward to the next part of our adventure, which starts with finding an apartment and a job.
Pancake Tour of North America 