Today was a slow start with some nice breakfast and coffee. I set off around 11am for Sacramento (again), keeping it in the back of my mind to remember to bring the instant camera with me. I set my GPS for a light rail station outside the city again, but closer than Watt/I-80 from last time.
As I got closer, I realized the GPS directions didn’t actually make much sense. I was supposed to arrive at my destination in 300 meters, but I was still on the highway. I ended up completely passing the station, very confused about how to get to it. I faffed around on various spots of the highway for about 10 minutes before I found a street I could park on the side of to double check my directions.
It turns out that the train station was directly below the highway, and Apple Maps was getting confused about the elevation, whereas Google Maps had no issue with it. So, I popped the station address into Google Maps and made my way there, only to find a new issue: the parking lots I saw next to the station on the satellite images were private parking for the hospital nearby.
So once again, I pulled over and looked at what other stations had parking, and it turns out that Power Inn station had free parking available and was only 6 minutes away. I was able to get there easily and get downtown once more.
There seemed to be an event going on, which I noticed some setup for the day before but hadn’t known what the setup was for. It was something to do with accessible food for all, which is neat. What was also neat were the horses they had all over the place. I don’t know why, but I’m not complaining because they’re cute.
After finding someone to take a photo with the instant camera for me, I went to a nearby Starbucks and planned where I was going to sleep tonight. I eventually found a rest stop in Bradley, about 4 hours south towards LA.
The drive there was beautiful, with huge rolling grassy hills that looked like they were right out of the teletubbies. Traffic was pretty light, and I was able to comfortably go 65 mph most of the way. But that’s not to say it was a trip without issue. I was stopped at a red light while switching highways, and the moment I started moving again I saw a hubcap rolling away in front of me. It only took a moment to realize that was my hubcap! I pulled over where I could and took a look at the tire to make sure nothing else was damaged, which it wasn’t, but I was also unfortunately too far away now to be able to retrieve the hubcap (also, it was on the other side of an 8 lane road and I didn’t know exactly where).
Regardless, I headed onward and made it to the rest stop around 10:30 pm, extremely tired but still wanted to read a chapter of my book, which I did, before settling in for the night. The rest stop wasn’t very busy either, and highway noise was minimal which was a plus.