California Trip - Day 1

Tuesday - May 15th, 2007

Cleaning the house and packing for our week-long trip went relatively smoothly even if I never did get the house perfectly clean before we left. Tuesday morning the kids and I went with Sir on his way to work as far as the car rental place. From there Sir went to work in our old vehicle while we took the rental and did our last minute shopping on our way home.

Sir actually had a doctor's appointment he had to go to before going to work, but he was also planning on working a half day and would be home around 3ish. He got to work a little later than he had hoped so he wasn't able to get off until 3:30, but a half hour delay was do-able. Around 2pm he got to thinking about the rental paperwork he'd glanced over before taking his leave of us, and thought he remembered seeing something about driving out of BC. He got a hold of me and had me double check the paperwork.

Sure enough, there was a little clause lost among the paragraphs in the rental agreement that said that unless we had specific written permission we couldn't drive the rental outside of BC, Alberta and Washington state. This was frustrating because when we were looking around for a rental place Sir had actually called the main office for the company we rented from and specifically asked about renting a vehicle to drive in the states. They had told us it would be fine and so we had decided to rent from them.

The next thing I did was call the actual rental location we had picked the car up from as if I was interested in renting from them to see if they'd provide a vehicle that could be driven to California. I discovered that yes, it was possible.... but for an additional fee. Overall it was cheaper to just pay the extra fees than to return the car and try to find one from a rental place that didn't have all kinds of conditions. But we still needed to get our little slip of written permission.

I told Sir what I had found out and he called them saying that he had rented a vehicle from them and then discovered the exceptions. He wanted to make arrangements to get the extended permission. They were fine with that, but told us that the vehicle they had rented out to us was due for maintenance and was not allowed to travel past a certain mileage that we would exceed on our trip. This meant that we had to return the rental we had (that I had already started loading with our luggage) and exchange it for another.

So, Sir got home at 4 (the rental place was closing at 5), I had unloaded the car and he rushed off to get one we would be allowed to drive to California. So much for our grand plans of actually getting on our way by 4-4:30ish! We finally crossed the border around 6:30pm. A little stressed (at least I was) and really on our way!

Our first stop was supposed to be for dinner with Sir's younger sister L. and her husband, but we ended up stopping at Doc and Bashful's to pick up a battery charger that we had ordered and had mailed to their house, a grocery store where I grabbed an energy drink for Sir and some tissues that I had forgotten to pack, and a little gas station/restaurant for Dolly to go potty (or get a new diaper since we didn't make it in time). We finally got to D&L's around 9:30. They must have been starving and I felt terribly guilty for making them have such a late supper.

In spite of the late timing, the meal was absolutely scrumptious. They did barbecued pork chops with homemade barbecue sauce (Sir insisted I get the recipe :)), barbecued skewers of zucchini and mushrooms, the most delicious baked potatoes I've ever had (I think she did some kind of twice-baked thing to them, but they were good - creamy insides and slathered in cheese), a beautiful garden salad and ice cream for dessert!

Dolly was in 7th heaven. She had been looking forward to our trip to California for weeks on end and part of the anticipation was stopping at Uncle D and Aunt L's house. They're pretty close to the very top of her 'favorite people' list and she wasn't disappointed at all. After supper the kids played with D&L while we relaxed a little, visited with them and enjoyed our little ones' excitement and happiness over tea (At least I had tea... I don't remember if Sir had anything or not).

Finally our little people had reached their limits and we changed them into pajamas, repacked the trunk a bit, said 'good bye' and started out at quarter to midnight for our drive through the night. The kids were asleep in ten minutes and Sir and I enjoyed a few minutes of peace and quiet together before I had to get some sleep myself. We had hoped to get more sleep before our trip, but there was always something else to do still so we never did get 'rested up' before we left. I needed to be able to drive when Sir reached his limit and if we could manage actually getting sleep while the other drove we wouldn't have to pull over and sleep away precious kid-quiet hours of the night!