Waiting on work

... spending the night in Bakersfield, CA.

We didn't think of anything else to do so we decided to drive ... on our day off.

Breakfast was the usual, we didn't have to rush to get anywhere so we weren't down when they opened.

Nothing else to do today so we decided to go take pictures at cemeteries. Later. We each sat on our computers until about 10:30 AM, check out is 11. So now I am caught up on my TripAdvisor posting again. No new DNA matches so I haven't done much there for a while. At one point got bored enough to look at my junk folder and found two emails about family tree. My junk folder only holds emails for a month so who knows how many I have lost.

Once we decided where we were likely going to stay for the night, BB started looking at reviews. She sometimes spends hours doing this, both for motels and food. One location had her laughing, but the story wasn't good. This location of a motel brand we stay at has a location in Bakersfield. One of the reviews said that when they got to their room, there were two cats living in it and had been there for a while based on the mess. And another review said the front desk came to their room and demanded payment for a stained towel, when the reviewer offered to pay, they demanded they leave ... NOW. And this person said they stay at this chain as often as we do. BB didn't want to stay there.

1st stop - Headed down to Santa Nella to Andersons Pea Soup. The ride down looks different in the day light. Doesn't take nearly as long when you are not slowed by rush hour traffic. Hills are green, fruit trees should be budding in a week or two. Did see one field / orchard that already was.

At Andersons, BB had soup and salad. I had their chicken salad sandwich and potato salad. We've eaten here enough we don't need to look at the menu. We are there before noon, I notice one couple come in, sit and then start to leave before going back to sit down. I wondered what that was about until I saw one of the people behind them get up to leave. I noticed she hugged someone at the next table but earlier they all looked like they had been talking to each other.

Then she fell onto the table. After being helped up she hugged others on her way out ... she was falling over drunk before noon. :(

On our way out of town we went past a In-N-Out Burger. I knew it was there but it's on the wrong side of the freeway to walk to and they usually have packed parking lots. This one has truck parking, we'll see if we make use of it.

We / I decided to take the back roads to Fresno. Different sights the the highway we've seen many times. Even the small towns have their homeless. Saw one guy laying his head on the railroad tracks. But like the song says ... But railroad don't run no more. Not sure if it does, but we had just passed where the tracks ended a few miles back.

It was about 90 miles of back roads. Computer kept telling us ... save ... minutes by going this (other) route. Sorry, we were here for the drive, not to save time.

2nd stop - Fresno Memorial Gardens. Office was open so they were able to give me the location of one of the two people I was looking for. But like often happens, the name I have of the other person is not what was on the grave stone. Same dates, nicknames instead of legal or given names. They also gave us a good map so it didn't take us long. Others (living) were there for a little longer. One gal had her lawn chair and a blanket laid on the ground.

This had taken a little while to get here so we only had time to visit one more cemetery before we wanted to be to the motel and it would be getting dark.

3rd stop - Visalia Cemetery. This locations the office was only open M-F. But as long as we were here, I looked online for a picture of the marker and saw the location was listed. And a grounds worker was just pulling up so I asked where I could find that section. He told us and we were on our way. Then we realize that the sections were clearly marked. Once we got close we parked and started walking. Then we realized that the edges of the section were marked with row and column numbers ... and then we noticed that every grave marker was stamped with a row and column number. Plus there were numbered corner markers on many of the plots. Most are not this detailed.

4th stop - Comfort Inn in Bakersfield. Checked in.

5th stop - Black Angus (Stuart Anderson's Cattle Company), Black Bear Diner were both close by. We were in the car before we decided we did not want to stuff ourselves that much again. I searched for a deli. Found the Deli Delicious was about five miles away. I had a French Dip and thought it was great. BB had a turkey sandwich and it was good, but 'just sliced meat.'

Back at the motel we decided the heater fan was too loud so we got a different room. The one is Verdi was too loud also and we didn't get much sleep.

Saw a couple of small cars pulling travel trailers. When we saw one of them the 2nd time, BB got a good look at what the car and the trailer were and looked them up online. The travel trailer was twice the weight (empty) of what the car was rated to tow. That's great ... until you try to stop.

10 less RV's on the board than yesterday. Dispatcher said they would pay our motels. But we are 250 miles away, I guess I'll ask about that, but we are paying a % of what other drivers are paying if they are at the Motel 6 in Livermore.

We'll decide tomorrow what we are going to do tomorrow.