We've Arrived in Walnut Creek, California

The turtle certainly catches your eye

We have arrived at my brother Pierre and his wife Paige's house in Walnut Creek California.  As we turned up the street, we saw this neon turtle in the middle of the road with a red flag that said "Caution, children playing."  I thought to myself what kind of ... and before I finished my thought I saw my two nephews riding their little tricycles up and down the road.  It was the first time I saw Everett and Vander in person and they were both all smiles when Pierre said say hi to Uncle Francois.

Welcome to California 

We started the morning with a hotel breakfast, the kids know the routine well now.  We got on the road just before 10:00 am and we had a little more than 500 kms to get to our furthest destination from home, Walnut Creek, before we start heading back to the East Coast.  The kids have settled into driving and are good at entertaining themselves while we drive.  They've made some wonderful coloring masterpieces and read lots of books and listening to lots of talking books.

Mount Shasta in the distance - pretty impressive

We stopped at a rest stop just outside of Willows, California for a quick break and then headed to Vacaville.  Vacaville is just west of Sacramento and Tanya and I had visited it when we were in California for our ninth anniversary a few years back.  There are a number of factory outlet stores and Tanya was looking forward to visiting them again.  The girls were equally excited when they figured out that there were a pile of kids clothing stores.

Andrea and Vander

We made some purchases, got a quick snack and drove our final 70 kilometres to Pierre's.  There were a couple of times when we were on a freeway that was six lanes wide and because it was supper time there were many cars occupying them.  I'm sure on one straight away we could see more cars ahead of us than there is in the entire City of Summerside.


Upon arrival we were warmly welcomed by the California Caron clan and the kids soon made their way to the back yard to play with their cousins.  They all got along wonderfully and enjoyed each others company.  I'm not sure if Vander will get tired of the girls doting on him because he didn't have too many free moments during our first few hours.  Everett also enjoyed having the kids push him on the swing and entertain him with their antics.


It is great to see Pierre and Paige and we just hung out for the evening catching up on what has been going on.  Today is their anniversary and they said that they couldn't think of a better way to celebrate then to hang out with their older brother (in-law) and his family.  Happy Anniversary.  Like all our other stops, they have opened their homes and made us feel welcomed right away.  We're looking forward to being stationary for a few days.


A number of people had been asking us before we left how many kms we planned on traveling and what we thought the cost of gas would be.  As of now, we are a touch over 9,800 kms traveled and we've spent just a touch over $1,100 in gas.  The cheapest we've spent on gas was today in Vacaville where the conversion worked out to 98.1 cents/litre and the most expensive was in Northern Ontario where it was $1.38 / litre.


We're looking forward to hanging out and exploring the Walnut Creek area over the next few days.


Later,
Francois