Travel day

Today was a long travel day, from 4:30 am Mountain time to 7 pm Pacific time. We drove from Lethbridge to Calgary, flew from Calgary to San Francisco, and then drove to Lake Tahoe. It was traffic jams nearly all the way from San Francisco to Sacramento. Eric was frustrated and kept asking, "Why do people live here?!?" He is not impressed with the San Francisco area.

We did get to drive over the Bay Bridge. We saw Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge to our left.

We hadn't had a meal all day, so we stopped mid-afternoon at In-N-Out and got everyone a Double Double burger and an order of fries with fry sauce.

Dio gave San Francisco a 2/10. In-N-Out Burger, however, got a very high rating from everyone.

As soon as we hit the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, the drive went from boring to beautiful. I was excited to drive past Donner Pass--I grew up hearing about the ill-fated party that turned to cannibalism to survive.

We made a quick stop for groceries at Truckee and were very happy to arrive in the evening right after sunset. We're staying in a rustic A-frame cabin, hand-built by the owners in the 1950s from a Sears kit. There are 12-14 here (depending on the night) and the rest in two other cabins or houses nearby.

When we arrived, my brother greeted us by saying, "If anyone touches me, I will probably punch them in the face." (He had just broken his back the day before in a mountain biking accident, fracturing one of his vertebra.) We didn't know this until we arrived! He was wearing a brace and was in a lot of pain. He drove all the way here from Oregon with his dog and now has to sit out almost all of the activities, since he can't bend, lift, or twist.

He's a physician himself, so when the accident happened, he knew right away that he'd probably fractured a vertebra. However, he was all by himself so it wasn't as simple as calling 911 (if he'd done so, they would have left his bike, his car, and his dog). So he hobbled himself back to his car and drove himself to the nearest emergency room. He explained his situation to a nurse, and she let him park his car in the ambulance bay to keep his dog cool.

So that was our travel day.