After catching a red-eye flight back to Oakland, we drove back to Hollister to spend a final night with John and Carol. Then after a few hours of sleep, it was back to Mom & Dad’s for a belated Christmas celebration. A few hours later, we were back on the road to Ferndale.

About 4 hours into the trip we started seeing signs saying that Hwy. 101 was closed north of Willits. At that point the only option is to take Hwy 20 to 5 to 299, which would add about 8 hours to the already 6 hour drive. Since we really wanted to get home and had no desire to stay in a motel overnight (driving another 8 hours in the rain was not an option) we decided to keep going and see if there was any chance the highway had been opened. About an hour from the slide there was one sign that said to expect an hour delay. That I could handle. When we got to the slide, we only had to wait about 15 minutes, so we ended up getting home in a very reasonable time since we didn’t take our usual antique shopping stops.

The arrival at home was a rather severe wake up call that we weren’t on vacation anymore. Even more silt had piled up in our front yard, so cleanup is definitely going to require a tractor, if it ever stops raining. Entering the bathroom, Lori found a dead mouse on the floor, and then later, in the kitchen found another surprise on the floor, by stepping in it with her bare feet. Let’s just say that Trevor doesn’t quite have the hang of the kitty box yet, so he used this particular spot in the kitchen several times. It was a big pile, and Lori stepping in it seemed to release the entire aroma at once. I tried to help Lori but she waved me off, and for that, I will be eternally grateful. I decided to retire and went the bedroom.

Since that room is off limits to the cats I expected everything to be perfectly in order, unlike the rest of the house where their boredom took a toll. Pulling back the covers though, I was dismayed to find that a mouse had decided that since we weren’t using the bed anymore that it would make a perfect spot to hang out. Not that I found another mouse, but rather a smaller, drier version of what Lori had found in the kitchen. I’m not sure if the mouse that the cats left for us in the bathroom was the culprit, but if it was, I can’t think of a better punishment for it.