FRIDAY, 13th MAY.
Leaving a warm, cosy bed in the early hours of a cold, dark morning to fly across country to Sydney, then to be stuck in a traffic jam for nigh on an hour is not exactly the ideal way to begin a birthday, but the bonus was to spend precious time with most of our family before our departure for Los Angeles in the morning.
Our flight left on time and arrived in Sydney about half an hour earlier than expected. I amused myself by taking a photo or two of the sunrise over South Australia.
SATURDAY, 14th MAY.
A late morning departure from Sydney aboard an American Airlines (a Qantas partner airline) flight for a relatively comfortable journey to Los angeles was the way we spent our first Saturday. The aircrew was the oldest we'd encountered, I remember the days when retirement was mandatory at a certain age! The meals were hot and tasty which is more than can be said for the Qantas food and we spent the day watching films, reading, doing crosswords and managed a little sleep.
Farewell Sydney.
After landing in LA on our second Saturday (courtesy of the international date line) we spent a long time in the queue to go through immigration, then a long time in the queue at the car rental place before finally taking to the road, leaving Los Angeles to drive to our overnight stop at Barstow. Stopping at the Summit Inn on the way, we ordered a club sandwich and "fries" to share, as neither of us was terribly hungry which was just as well as we couldn't finish the single serve so there was no way we'd have struggled through two serves.
Our next stop was at the Route 66 Museum in Victorville, which houses an interesting collection of memorabilia from the "Mother Road" and is manned by volunteers, all helpful and extremely friendly and who told us about the bottle tree ranch which was our next stop.
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From there we carried on to Barstow, checked into the Route 66 Motel and collapsed with exhaustion, it was a loooooong day!!
