One thing we’re realizing about driving across the entire country is how big the United States is. Seriously. I recently read a fascinating book called Why Geography Matters  all about the importance of studying geography, (which is not just physical geography but human movement as well). However, sometimes it is hard to get an actual picture of what geography means until you physically see it. At least for me, which is probably one of the reasons I love to travel so much.  But this trip has cemented for me the vastness of this country. Being from Seattle, I think of California as being pretty close, but it took us 2 days to get there! (Okay, so we like to take the easy route and not drive more than 8 hours a day).
Anyway, on Friday, we drove from Sutherlin, Oregon to Sacramento, California. We ended up staying at another lovely Best Western and having dinner with a good friend of mine who graduated with me from the University of Washington in library and information science (and is now an awesome teen librarian). What we were really excited about though, was our storytime on Saturday morning with toddlers. We got up early, had our (free) breakfast, headed out to the parking lot…where I proceeded to back into a parked car. Um, really? I’ve had the Sprinter van all summer long and have been driving since I was 17 and the one time I’ve gotten into an accident was with little time to spare before I go to read and give away books to children?! Turns out karma was not with me that morning. However, as my mom very kindly reminded me, at least there was no one in the car and the damage was only minor. Plus, we were able to get to the storytime! So, despite a morning mishap, the storytime went off without a hitch. (Well, mostly. When my mom came out dressed like a dog after I had read a few stories, one child did burst into tears, oops.)  We read the fun read-aloud stories, No Sleep for the Sheep, Jazz Baby, and Piggy Pie Po. (Go check them out if you haven’t read them! ).

 
The rest of the weekend has been filled with fun visits with friends. We’ve discovered that while we love the city of San Francisco (we got to walk on the Golden Gate Bridge!), we do not love driving in the city. Tomorrow, we’re going to a school in Los Altos, CA to visit third-graders, after which we start on the looooong drive toward Denver. More on the school visit tomorrow!