Yellowstone Road Trip - Day 26

The old buzzards and Fannie Mae left Sonora, California on Highway 49/108 this morning at 7:59am on the last leg of their 26 Day Yellowstone Road Trip. No one was sad to be going home – just very glad that things went so well and that it has been such a wonderful adventure and so much fun. We'll be wound up and ready to go back to Sonora for Thanksgiving in a couple of month.

By 8:40 we were at the Oakdale Cheese Factory in Oakdale to get some quark for Linda and curds for John but they were not open yet so we will have to wait until we go through there on our Thanksgiving trip in November. We did find a Starbucks in Escalon that was open and were thus fueled up for the rest of today's trek.

Manteca = fat or lard
Escalon = rungs or steps
Milpitas = corn or maize
Thus endeth th Spanish lesson.

Speaking of that lesson, if you've ever read much about Bodie, CA, the ghost town, it wasn't much of a place in which to be situated. In one book, someone going to live there was said to have exclaimed, "Goodbye, God, I'm going to Bodie". But, the author also explained that the person may have been saying, "Good, by God, I'm going to Bodie"! Sooo, in John's twisted brain, one might also say, "Good Lard, I'm going to Manteca!" Or, would that be "Good, Lard, I'm going to Manteca!"

Since we expected the fridge at home to be pretty bare, we stopped at one of many inviting-looking fruit stands along the way to Manteca and got pluots, plums, peaches, nectarines and grapes (all were $1.00 a pound). We also got a few of their interesting-looking heirloom tomatoes since we don't know if there will be any ready in our garden at home. Two of the most unusual ones were zebras and tie dies. The tomatoes were $1.50 a pound.

We were on Highways 5, then 205, then 580, then 680 to San Jose. There was a lot of traffic as we approached the Bay Area but for a while we got to ride in an express lane since we had two people in our vehicle. And we were exempt from a toll charge of $5.50.  When we got on 101 to Morgan Hill at 10:02am, we took the Tennant Avenue exit. We had been looking forward to seeing what progress had been made to the Butterfield extension while we were gone. Sure enough, they are still hard at work on it and Watsonville Road at Monterey Highway is closed so we went to California Avenue, Water Street, Easy and finally home where we pulled in and took down the mileage reading so we would have the exact number of miles traveled (for those of you who enter our Mileage Madness contest). Sorry if this paragraph was boring to those of you not keeping up with the mileage. But you are welcome to take a wild guess. It is an interesting total and you just might come close enough to win one of the three great prizes.

"Home again, home again, jiggity jog". We arrived home by 11:30, did our unloading and had lunch with John's cousin Jerry, who has been housesitting. Unpacking will take a while but at least we did remember to take most of what we needed and we have a list made of additional items to include next time, such as binoculars, spotting scope, bird and plant ID books.

In the lost and found department, John lost his beloved teal blue water bottle. It was left on the Yellowstone tour bus and did not get turned in. It was the one he also used on his bicycle. Better replace it! Linda's thermal top was also left on the same bus but did get turned in. Linda got some buffalo earrings at Fort Caspar, wore them a lot and lost one of them two days ago.

And the tomato report is that we did not need to get tomatoes. The bushes are loaded, mostly with a variety of beautiful golden heirlooms that Linda got at a plant sale this spring outside BookSmart. Somewhere among all those vines is a plant label that we really want to take note of once it can be found. The largest one picked so far weighed in at two pounds! See today's photo gallery (by clicking here) for two of Linda's loveliest tomatoes. Our neighbor Pat did a super job of watering and the whole yard looks really nice. Thanks Pat! And thanks also to Josie and the Herreras and the Farnsworths for helping Jerry keep an eye on everything. We have wonderful neighbors!

Speaking of Jerry, he is hinting that he would like to stay around until after Taste of Morgan Hill this weekend, which is fine with us. It seems that he met a sweet lady at the Senior Center who has signed him up to help pour wine during our annual street fair.

Fannie Mae seems especially glad to be home and is delighting in attempting to terrorize the squirrels in the back yard.

Some trails are happy ones
Others are blue
It's the way you ride the trail that counts;
Here's a happy one for you.
HAPPY TRAILS to you,
Keep smilin' until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we're together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
HAPPY TRAILS to you
'Til we meet again!