Driving Miss Katie, Day 4

Yesterday was the final day of long distance driving - hallelujah! The scenery has not been as interesting as I had anticipated it would be. There were a few areas that had some great rock formations and/or mountains, but for the most part we might as well have been driving through Kansas. But with less vegetation. The exits on Interstatw 40 are few and far between, so you really need to plan your gas and potty breaks. I can't even imagine trying to make the drive with small children. And the interstate is in terrible shape, in all the states we traveled through. I won't complain about the highway conditions in Missouri again.

Around noon we began looking for a place to eat. We finally saw an exit with a Dairy Queen, so I pulled off. Everyone else had the same idea, and the parking lot was packed! Plus gas at the nearby station (the only two things at this exit) was $4.89 per gallon! It is not even that high here in LA. Fortunately I didn't need to fuel up. Everywhere else we had paid $3.69 or $3.79, with the exception of $3.99 in Sedona where they were ripping off the tourists. Anyway, we decided to try to find food elsewhere, and drove another 60 miles before finding a town with some fast food restaurants.

When we were about 70 miles from LA the traffic picked up quite a bit. By the time we got on Highway 101 it was like rush hour in St. Louis. And this was a Saturday. I cannot imagine what it is like on a weekday. We finally got off on Sunset Boulevard and crept our way to the Comfort Inn. Pulling into their lot I quickly noticed three things - the motel rooms open to the exterior of the building (which I try to avoid for safety reasons), this was not a "secure" parking lot as I had been led to believe, and if the people hanging out in the lot were any indication of the area and people staying here, I don't want a room here. After consulting the Internet we realized that their are two Comfort Inns on Sunset. Who would have thunk it? That was the good news. The bad news was that we now had to turn around and go back through all the crappy traffic again to get to the correct hotel. Ugh!

But we finally made it and checked in with no problem. We do have a secure parking garage here, which is great. The Internet does not work in our room and our room faces Sunset, which is very noisy. So we will attempt to move to a room closer to the center of the hotel, and one that is not on Sunset. Since it is Sunday I imagine a number of people will be checking out today, so hopefully it won't be an issue.

Today we are going to look at apartments. Even if the offices are closed for Easter we figured we can get the lay of the land and perhaps find some that aren't listed on rent.com. It should be an interesting day.