The day dawned bright and sunny and with the promise of a warm ride. We breakfasted at a local diner where Mark sensibly ordered bacon, eggs and hash browns – which for some reason were white. Meanwhile I fought a grim and bloody war of attrition with a large cow which had apparently fallen into a huge vat of potatoes and mushrooms before being diced and finally dispatched by having two large eggs dropped on it. Delicious – but I’m still struggling to digest it.
After the epic breakfast, we set off for Merced, some 200 miles south down Route 99.
However after a few minutes I watched Mark miss the intersection and accelerate merrily away down route 149. It was at that point that it occurred to me that this was not a good time to realise that neither of us has any sense of direction and we both have the memory-span of a particularly inattentive goldfish. There followed a frantic chase with much waving of arms before we found a farm track where we could turn round and get back on course. It was all plain sailing after that apart from navigating round Sacramento in what seemed to be rush hour!
The scenery was a mainly flat, agricultural and industrial landscape with rice-fields and orchards interspersed with small towns.
After just over 100 miles we needed a break and pulled over at a truckstop. We discovered that we were actually just outside of Lodi. You have to be a Creedence Clearwater Revival fan to realise how exciting this was! For those of you familiar with the lyrics of the song, you will be relieved to learn that we were in fact just passing through and we did not get stuck in Lodi again.
Naturally we got lost again looking for the hotel and when we finally got here we discovered that I had booked the room for last night rather than tonight! However we managed to smooth over that little blip and we are now shaved, showered, shampooed and ready to head off for our tea.
Our mileage today was 217 – exactly the same as yesterday – how weird is that?
Did I mention there were no pine trees today?
PS Sorry for the late post. The wifi was not cooperating last night.
Over the Hill and Far Away.......... 
Whatever you guys eat for breakfast…stay away from the grits….THE most unimaginable gloop possible….loved the reference to CCR lyrics….God how old does that makes us ??