English vacation (D-Day minus 1): Off to England!

It's Saturday, and the day we're leaving for our England trip. We originally were scheduled to head out on Friday, but with Hyrum having to work late, we would be leaving too late to make a Friday departure worthwhile, so we opted to leave early on Saturday morning. We decided to leave just as soon as we woke up, with bags packed in the car the night before and the kids sleeping in their traveling clothes so as soon as we woke up we could stick them on the toilet and put them in the car with no fuss and trouble.

Well, in true Cluff fashion, that didn't happen. The kids did sleep in their traveling clothes, but the bags stayed in the house and Hyrum had to work on a kitchen plan until late into the night, and after several days of packing, I threw in the towel and went to bed...after writing a list of what needed to be done in the morning. One huge bonus for me was that I didn't have to spend Thursday cleaning since it turns out we weren't going to have house sitters after all. We found out on Wednesday that the girlfriend of Hyrum's employee was a smoker!!! If you don't know how I feel about cigarettes, let's just say I'd rather have a chronic farter or a crazy cat lady and her 40 cats watch my house than someone who smokes, even though the girl smokes outside. Breathing secondhand smoke makes me feel as though my throat will close and it gives me terrible headaches. The last thing I wanted was the stink of stale cigarettes lingering in my house. We opted to just have Hyrum's employees come by the house every other day to water, feed animals, and check on things.

Well, the delays continued when our morning dash to the car turned into a sluggish pack up and leave. We managed to leave the house on Saturday morning, but it was 10:30!! We were going to take the coast route and drive down Hwy 101, so we took the shortcut over to Bandon and found ourselves 20 minutes down the road when we were unexpectedly stopped at a roadblock for road repair with no previous warning signs and no way to get around it. We had to turn around and drive most of the way back and take an alternate LONG route! Such a Cluff thing to happen!



We finally got on 101, 45 minutes later, and headed south to San Fransisco (our flight was leaving from there). We stopped in Brookings at Harris Beach for a bathroom break and chance to get the wiggles out.


While there, Talea found a woman feeding squirrels! That's just up Tilly's alley, so I took Hyatt and Talea up the slippery hill (which she slipped down later, leaving her wrist slightly bloodied) to see the squirrels, and they were the fattest squirrels I'd seen in my life!!!! Truly they must never have to hunt for a meal. A one-eyed squirrel approached the kids and I told them to hold out their hand so it would think they had food and come sit by them, but as I was snapping pictures, Talea let out a yelp and said the squirrel had bit her! Sure enough, the tip of her finger was pouring blood! Since it was bleeding so much, I didn't worry about rabies or anything with all the flushing going on. Plus, the squirrels looked pretty normal...not rabid or anything. The lady feeding the squirrels gave the kids some sunflower seeds, and though Talea was anxious to feed them even after the bite, Hyatt was gun shy from the bloody incident and opted to just watch, and would actually flinch and lean away if they got too close.



When the blood wouldn't let up and it was getting on her face and shirt, I finally decided to pry her away from the squirrels to get a bandage.



Hyatt took the opportunity to chase some seagulls until his pants wouldn't stay up anymore and Hyrum had to pull them up.



Down the road we went. Can I just say that Hwy 101 is so fun and scenic!?! Next year we'd love to travel down it for a week to stop at the Trees of Mystery, drive through the trunk of a redwood, go on a gondola through the trees, walk the many beaches, and stop at all the other cute little side-of-the-highway hot spots we passed by. We got lunch in Crescent City and then stopped in Eureka (an adorable city, by the way) at a Target (I adore the baby clothes and supplies at Target...so cute!) to get a bigger diaper bag for all the things we'd stuffed in mine, and to find some electronic stuff to enable us to charge our phone and cameras with the funky electrical system in the UK.

On the road we went again and finally arrived at my cousin Angi's house in Santa Rosa after 9pm. The kids went wild with their cousins, and Hy and I had a blast catching up with Angi and her parents (who happened to be there too) until Jared got back from work. Angi and Jared are so sweet...not only did they give us room and board, they were going to drive us to the airport in the morning and keep our car for 3 weeks so we wouldn't have to spend $300 on airport parking. Thanks guys!

So after a long day of traveling, we were one day closer to England, we had survived a late start, an unexpected road detour, a squirrel bite and had managed to suppress an almost irresistible desire to stop at all roadside tourist traps. Not too bad for a Cluff.