We were up relatively early on Wednesday. Donna had picked up a rental car the day before from Hertz. The gal at the rental agency was thorough and tried to verify Donna’s family discount. After a few attempts, she decided the system wasn’t giving her accurate results and gave up. In reality, Donna’s dad retired and is no longer a Hertz employee so we aren’t sure if our family discount number is valid.

After Donna picked up the car, we enjoyed happy hour with Bob and Sini Schmitt. We sat outside for a few hours and talked about our travel plans among other things. They gave us some tips on places to see and stay when we head east from here. We also talked about meeting up in Albuquerque for the balloon fiesta in October.

So, back to our early morning yesterday. We were up early to make the drive in the rental car to the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. I don’t like driving in LA, I spent many years doing it when I reported to the Volkswagen of America (VWoA) office in Culver City. I estimated three hours to cover the 120 miles from here to LA and another three hours to return. I wanted to hit the road by 9am or the return time would increase as the traffic volumes increased in the afternoon.

We managed to get out of Mission Bay RV Resort by 9am and headed north on I-5. We had a couple of slow-downs but cruised comfortably toward San Clemente. Traffic halted before we got there. I suspected a Border Patrol check station near San Onofre, but when we got to the weigh station where the Border Patrol typically sets-up, traffic started moving back up to speed with no Border Patrol stop. Who knows what that was all about.

We cruised the carpool lane up I-5 through Orange County into LA. There was another slow section from the 91 freeway to I-605 due to construction, but overall it wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated.

I dropped Donna off at the back entrance to the Bonaventure at 11:10am, just two hours and ten minutes after we left. After a quick pit stop, I was turned around and headed south. On the way back I discovered the Hertz rental car had XM satellite radio. I found a good station – Deep Tracks – and that made the trip back seem to go faster. I stopped for lunch in Santa Ana and made my way back to San Diego by 1:45pm. I stopped at Chase Bank to make a deposit for Donna, refueled the car and dropped it off on Garnet Avenue near East Mission Bay Drive. From there it was an easy walk of a few miles back along the Rose Creek Trail to the RV park. Whew! I’ll do it again on Sunday.

I was home in time to receive a package from UPS. I had ordered a dozen vacuum cleaner bags for our Maxum RV2000 central vacuum cleaner. Donna has been using it lately instead of the cordless Dyson. She likes the central vacuum. It works great but it uses disposable bags that filter dust down to 0.3 microns (that’s really tiny – a micron is 1/1000th of a millimeter). The Dyson has a washable filter and a plastic container to hold debris, so no replacement bags were needed.

Central vacuum cleaner

I’m expecting UPS to make another delivery from Amazon today, but that will be fodder for another post.