Today we left the California coast near San Simeon and headed for downtown San Francisco.  It’s about a 220 mile drive.  We expected the first part to be slow, but the drive along the cliffs facing the Pacific  is incredible.  We were surprised by how many parts of the drive are one-lane only.  You wait at traffic lights for up to five minutes at a time while they switch lanes.  The bigger problem is the people who plod along with twenty or so cars stacked behind them.  California actually has a law (C.V.C. 21656, which is posted frequently by the roadside) that covers this.  It says, if you’re holding up five or more cars you MUST pull over at the next turnout.  Some did, and we waved our thanks as we went by.  Most don’t, they just plod on five miles or more below the speed limit.  After quite a few hours, we reached Carmel by the Sea and had lunch and did some window shopping.

The rest of the drive should have been easy, but California traffic is broken.  The last 42 miles took us two hours, bumper-to-bumper and stop-and-go the whole way.

In many ways this was the perfect year to take this trip.  The weather has been great.  Gas prices are sort-of low.  And hotels are so un-crowded we are getting great rates at really nice places.  But at the same time, driving in California is becoming completely impractical.