leaving Eureka

It's time to leave Eureka and Oscar knows that something is

 happening that he doesn’t understand.  It’s like he thinks that we can all live in Kim and James’ living room for the rest of our lives.  He keeps unpacking his hot wheels that we have already tried to pack up and John has to keep making trips out to the car to put stuff in it so that Oscar will leave it

 packed up.  We head to Café Nooner for breakfast with Kim and James after Brendan leaves for school.  I have a delicious peach mimosa while Kim gets the pomegranate one.  John gets some awesome looking biscuits and gravy, while I get Oscar’s huge fruit cup.  He only eats all 

 the bacon that he got and then proceeds to put his hands in his hair and rub.  So, the kid now smells delicious at least.  We head out into the rain for goodbyes thinking that this will hurry things along, but I forgot how Eureka rain doesn’t seem to count as rain.  You feel like you walk between the raindrops, but it does disguise the crying that we’re doing.  Brendan pointed out this morning that Oscar would be 10 by the time we 

 saw them again if we keep to the 8 year lag between visits.  I don’t think we’ll be able to wait that long.  We finally get into the car, give Oscar his kids’ Dramamine to avoid a repeat of our trip across the mountains.  There are a couple of slides on 299 out of Arcata, but they construction stoppage doesn’t

add too much time and Oscar chooses to nap through most of the trip.  California has grandeur, because of the mountains, valleys, rivers, oceans and just hugeness of everything.  But Michigan has a beauty that is just as staggering at times with no tsunamis, earthquakes, rock slides or wildfires like this place.  I told John on this trip back that I don’t believe that we could have stayed here long term.  I think I would have come to

resent this place.  It’s so isolated from so much and every winter there is another road closure for the foreseeable future that makes it even harder to get in and out.  3 hours to Chicago or Detroit and 45 minutes to Grand Rapids beats the hell out of 6 hours to San Francisco or Sacramento down roads that might not exist anymore.  Not to mention the fact that my house would cost $700,000 or more here.  But it was a great place for a year or two and a wonderful place to visit.