Adam's Blog July 19th, Day 14!

Heading out of Barstow and the plan is to wrap up Route 66 today. We were expecting about a 4 hour drive based upon our normal MO of doubling the GPS estimate. Boy were we wrong. I have only driven one other time in LA but I had already forgotten how slow it could be to get around on the surface streets. No wonder people put up with all of that traffic on the highway.

Anyway, back to Barstow. The drive in was very pretty through some valleys again with a ton of very long Union Pacific trains. We had high hopes of keeping good time and maybe making it to my friend Matt's baby shower for the twins he is expecting. Then we hit the beginning of the sprawl for LA in San Bernardino. Then we realized that that was not going to happen. So we went with the back up. Swing by the Farmer's Market for a late lunch (and sweets stop), head to the Santa Monica Pier for the official end of the route and head in to the restaurant where Matt works for a quick visit.

The Farmer's Market is amazing, as it was last time. So many different types of prepared and fresh foods. It is honestly hard to choose where to eat, other than the handful of stalls that are obviously lower quality. Now this place is busy during lunch time. When I say busy I mean there are people looking for tables like hawks so you need to move in faster if you want to sit. This was a role that I was glad Court was willing to take because I wasn't sure I wanted to get into a fight. For food, I went with Korean this time and while it was good, it was not as good as Sapporo in Westborough. Courtney agreed. The kids loved the pizza they had though. Next stop here was Littlejohns. This is a toffee and sweets shop that Courtney fell in love with last time we stopped. Courtney attempted to buy out their entire shop of toffee and marshmallow delights and almost succeeded. Abigail got to try one of the delights and is now addicted too. I wonder if they are laced with anything. Is this a gateway sweet? What if the start free basing coco?

After the market we struggle through traffic to get to the pier. It is so busy here, it isn't funny. After spending 30 minutes or so trying to find a parking lot and another 10 or so trying to find a space in said lot, we head up to the pier. Immediately I hear from Gideon, "Can I go swimming? ". We try to distract him and it works for a while. Long enough to visit the marker and a little kiosk with some Route 66 stuff and a guy who had made the drive himself. Then we see the Ferris Wheel at the park on the pier. This one I am at least more open to, until Courtney says that she heard someone saying that the wait was nearly an hour. Ouch. We attempt to distract again but he has had enough. We cancel the dinner plans and head to the hotel so that he can decompress a bit and get some of his energy out in the pool.

The upside, our hotel for the evening was right next door to a Souplantation, aka Sweet Tomatoes, so we did get to eat somewhere we wanted to hit. Gideon enjoyed the pool and slept like a rock. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

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