Day 92 Monday April 15

Day 1 on the road.  I got up had my coffee & frosted mini wheat’s cereal breakfast. Then I went about doing closing, storing, unhooking etc.  Sheila got up & we were ready to go by 9:50, we ran into a small snag getting the car hooked up due to the low mounted parts scraping on cement parking spacers and needing to be interchanged left to right side so the non burred side was up and I needed to spray the entrance stair joints with WD40 after not moving for 3 months & getting rained on.  All fixed & away by 10:20 AM at 52504 MILES, note that all mileages etc are going to be in miles not kilometres. The next delay was one of my making.  I had set our destination in the GPS and put in a “Via Point” so as to get us going on the correct hwy system.  Up hwy 76 to Hwy 10 and onto Hwy 10 westbound and then we came to a crawling stop in traffic--every lane was solid cars & trucks.  I got a GPS message to take a turn to Hwy 60 which didn’t seem familiar but in the middle of traffic I didn’t have much choice.  The hwy by now is 7 lanes wide in each direction and solid traffic, going only 10 to 15 MPH!  I got another change of hwy notice from the GPS & by now I’m sure I have never been on these hwys.  However, there nowhere to pull off & if I did, I would have a problem getting back on the hwy. The GPS was still counting down mileage to our destination & giving time of arrival notes so I trusted in technology and kept going.  We ended up on Hwy 5 at the north end of LA and we wanted to stop for lunch but, there were no rest areas until 2:45 PM.  4 hours after heading out of GVP, we found one & stopped.  We had only covered 161 miles in 4 ¼ hours!  We had a nice lunch and headed out again at 3:40 PM.  Now that we were clear of the LA traffic nonsense, and we made better time.  We pulled into our campground, (Fun in the Sun), at 5:20 at 52764 miles, - 100 miles in 1hr 40 mins. We got a pull-through which saves unhooking.  Sheila went to their pool, supposedly heated to 78 but did not go in because it felt too cold, but she did shower and wash her hair.  I stayed to do the journal and relax.  It was a tiring day being at the wheel for about 6 hours.  Fortunately the slow driving paid off, in that I wasn’t feeling stressed driving even when surrounded on all sides by big semi’s.  They were going as slow as me and we were both big rigs —so, no problem. Now, the reason I got into that mess of traffic is that when I turned the GPS off Sun night & on again Mon morning. It showed the route, destination, times & mileages but what I didn’t know was that the “Via Point” had disappeared, so the GSP quite properly took me on what should have been the fastest roads to I-5 & up to 99 & to our campground on Hwy 99 instead of going the route I normally drive--a light-traffic 2 to 4 lane hwy. I know for future to do my planning just before I go, set up the GPS, & leave, and check the route, which I will do for tomorrow’s run.  Besides WiFi they have TV here, so we can get our Monday night shows.  If we can watch some of our series shows here it saves time when we are home & there is a lot to do beside watch TV.