By 10, we’re packed and pulling out of the Pacific Heights Inn. We know we can’t go back across the Bay Bridge because it’s closed for the weekend, but we’re not far from the Golden Gate, so we’ll head for the beautiful bridge and drive north for a few miles before turning eastbound for Pittsburgh.

It’s so foggy we can’t see much of the bridge at all, but there are lots of people out walking across it. Bob says that it was so foggy when he got up that he knew it would be pointless to go back to get a rooftop shot from the house of the people who have the last marker hidden in their hedge. We thank them for the offer nonetheless.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the southern end of what’s called the Redwood Highway, so it’s nice to be starting our journey on a highway with a name as well as a number, US 101.  We stay on the Redwood till Novato, where we take the exit to California Route 37 that skirts around the northern edge of San Pablo Bay.   Just after we cross the Napa River, we begin our quickie superhighway journey eastbound.

We get on Interstate 80, intending to make some time. Eat up some miles. I’m hoping that we’ll still consider stopping or getting off on the Lincoln Highway for a while if it seems interesting or we just need to find somewhere non-chain-y to eat.

Jarrett is driving.  And he’s eager to get home.   Before we know it, we are in Sacramento, through Sacramento, and on our way back up into the Sierra Nevada mountains.   On 80, you don’t get the up-close contact with the Donner Pass, but there’s a Scenic View pull off where we stop to get some shots looking back to the west at the pass and the cool old concrete arch bridge where we paused on our slow journey westward.  It’s odd to realize that was just yesterday morning.

We consider lunch in Reno, thinking we’ll watch the billboards and just pull off at a casino, grab a quick bite in a buffet and continue on our way.   We actually give it a try at one of the big casinos in Sparks, NV, and suddenly we’re stopped dead in our tracks.  Labor-Day-weekend traffic on the exit ramp is clogging everything.  We aren’t even trying to get in at this casino.  We stay in the far right lane, trying to slip around the massive bottleneck as the other three lanes squeeze into casino registration and check-in lanes.   It’s midday Saturday on a long holiday weekend, and lots of people are heading for the casinos.

We drive another 30 or so miles to Fernley, Nevada, where there’s a little casino, Chukar’s, just off I-80.   We have no trouble finding a good parking space in this lot.   Lunch is not memorable, but I’m puzzled again by the obviously addictive nature of the slot machines jingling and coughing, beeping and squeaking all around us in the subdued lighting.  In this small town casino, cool and inviting in the desert, otherwise normal-looking people are pouring quarters into “slots,” slot machines that have themes often based on kiddie movies, comic books and cutsey pop culture.   It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon.   I don’t get it. 

We get back on the highway.  

The two guys who ran it back on our earlier trip were not around. There were still friendly boxes of donuts and a coffee pot in the little office, and the young Asian man behind the desk said we’d have no trouble walking to a nice dinner. We said we were thinking about seafood. “Just walk down Union Street, stay on this side, and you’ll come to several excellent seafood places, one of them is Chinese, about 5 or 6 blocks down.”

“What about Italian?” asks Bob.

“You’ll pass three or four Italian places before you get to the seafood places. All are good. I recommend any of them.”

We wander that way. One of the first places we come to is a small Italian place called Capannina, and we pause. We’re looking for a menu. There’s a guy leaning on the parking meter across fro the door. “You guys looking for a good dinner?” he asks. “Yes we are,” says Mr. Bob. “Well, you’ll be very happy here. The food is excellent, the service is superb.” “Oh yeah,” says Bob, “and who are you? The owner?” The guy laughs and says, “Well, actually I am.”

We think all the signs and unexpected pushes are friendly and good. We go in. There’s one tall slim ebullient waiter with an Italian accent taking everyone’s orders, and there are many other waiters delivering all the plates. It’s crowded and bustling but that usually makes for an exciting and interesting dinner. We order. Bob gets the tuna. Jarrett goes for the cioppino. And I get the special, braised veal shanks, some sort of osso bucco.

Have I mentioned that I realized at the motel that I’m zonked? I’m exhausted. I didn’t even bring my camera to dinner. Maybe the end of the trip has just allowed my eleven days of exhilarating travel and heightened sensory intake (everything we’re seeing and doing seems so bright and exciting) to catch up with me. I am happy to be here in the restaurant, but I’m looking forward to sleep.

The food is excellent. Jarrett may have made the best choice: his cioppino is a bowl full of seafood in and out of shells, a delicious looking tomato-y broth and a bright red lobster on top. My veal is very good, and Bob shares bites of his tuna, but next time I will seriously consider the cioppino.

We like the Capannina very much. And we find it amazing that we stumbled onto two wonderful places in one day. It must be California.

Bob is still buzzing on wild energy, and he decides to go for a postprandial stroll. Jarrett and I are going to head back to the motel. We all agree to meet for breakfast at 8, and then we’ll head for home. Jarrett is very eager to be back in Pittsburgh. Homesick? Lovesick? Whatever. He says he’ll work on the video postcards before he goes to sleep.

I need sleep now.

Let’s just say that it’s not immediately obvious. And I’m driving so I’m not scanning the Butko book for clues. We see the stately California Palace of the Legion of Honor that looks like a museum (which it is) off to the left. But we’re not tourists now, we’re a TV crew that wants to shoot the end of the road before it’s too dark to do so. Where is the blasted marker? We continue straight ahead, thinking we’ll see something that says Lincoln Highway. No such luck.

It’s a dead end. We see two young women walking out from a hiking path of some sort. Bob asks if they happened to see the marker for the end of the Lincoln Highway. “The what?”

We see two dogwalkers in a nearby parking lot and ask them too. The man says, “I’ve been walking my dog here for over ten years, and I’ve never seen anything for the Lincoln Highway.”

You get the picture. The last marker, the Terminus, the end of the cross-country journey, it’s not a major attraction here in Lincoln Park.

We drive up and turn in front of the museum of fine arts. We drive very slowly. We keep going, and soon we’re heading back down the hill surrounded by the golf course. It ain’t down here. We start back up the hill. I’m crawling along. It has to be here somewhere.

There! The marker! It’s there beside the bus stop. It’s right across from the front of Palace of the Legion of Honor, but it’s totally upstaged by a nondescript bus stop shelter.

Bob is shooting already but he says, “No. It’s a mess. There’s too much garbage all around here. I’m not shooting it like this. We have to clean up first.” He’s absolutely right. The concrete marker with the stately notice, WESTERN TERMINUS OF THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, is surrounded by spent ketchup packets, old styrofoam burger shells, empty greasy french fry bags, sticky milkshake cups. It’s a litter magnet. Bob has put the camera down and is picking up trash. There’s an explanatory panel there too, telling interested bus riders and passersby what this Lincoln Highway marker is all about, but it’s also decorated by fast food waste. We police the whole area.

Bob is pissed. “We didn’t drive all this way to have to deal with crap from stupid fast-food eaters. Morons.” When we get it reasonably clean, “red up” as we’d say in Pittsburgh, then Bob starts to get some shots. Jarrett is totally impressed by the Palace across the way and says we should be shooting that, but it’s not our story. I suggest that Jarrrett and I work together on a final video postcard for this journey of ours. Bob is shooting the Terminus from all possible angles in the last seconds of dull gray light. The fog makes it misty too, and for the first time, I put on a jacket that I’ve had in the van. It’s cool up here.

I guess there’s a certain relief, but a real sadness too, not just because the trash was so disconcerting, but also because the journey is over. This leg of it anyway. “Terminus” is so final a word. I wouldn’t mind if the drive continued for several more days.

I set up my camera on Bob’s tripod, set the timer, and we take a couple of pictures of the three of us, the Three Musketeers, standing at the Terminus marker. It’s taken us eleven days.

As we climb back into the van to head to our motel, I hear something off to one side of the van, and then I see a big raccoon walking toward me. “Get in,” says Bob. “Don’t let him get close. There may be something wrong with him if he’ll approach you like that.” OK. Good thinking. The raccoon skuttles off toward the Terminus. Jarrett says, “He’s probably living on the trash left by people at the bus stop.” Yeah. And he’s not cleaning up after himself. Old Rocky Raccoon.

We turn left and immediately see the entrance to Lincoln Park, so we’re essentially at the end, but there’s one line in Butko’s book that makes us pull over again. He writes: “…Left at El Camino del Mar; the westernmost extant marker is hidden here in shrubbery on the southeast corner.” We have to find it. Jarrett and Bob both get out their compasses so we know for sure which corner is southeast.

There’s a beautiful home on the corner with an attractive garden, but we see no Lincoln Highway marker. I wonder if maybe the marker was removed since Brian wrote the book. We’re looking around, and I wander a few steps back up 32nd Avenue, and I happen to look into the hedge that’s there near the corner, and Eureka! there’s our marker buried deep inside the hedge! “Hidden here in shrubbery!”

Now we have to get a shot. Bob starts to unload the equipment. I suggest to Jarrett that we maybe shoot another quick video too. And as we’re starting to do that, a nice looking man comes out the front door of the house with his dog and understandably wonders what we’re doing.

We explain our quest, and the guy, whose name is Tim, says that Oh yeah, occasionally they’ll see people looking in the garden and the hedges for the old concrete marker. But yeah, he’s known it was there for quite some time.

As we continue gathering our video documentation, we meet Tim’s wife Jennifer and daughter Jessica. They’re saying goodbye to some visitors who’ve been inside, and we’re trying to explain who we are and what we’re doing. It’s a hoot.

Jennifer invites us to come in and consider shooting the spectacular view from the roof of their house, maybe even tomorrow morning if it’s clear. Bob accepts her invitation to walk up now and see what it’s like. Jarrett and I stay on the sidewalk to finish the video postcard. [See it here.]

Now the sun is fading fast. The fog is rolling in. It’s cooler right now than ever before on our trip. San Francisco, here we are. As soon as Bob gets down from the roof, we’re ready to drive to the end of the line.

Jarrett tries to get some shots of vineyards along the way.

Our long lunch has delayed our entry into the city a bit, and we know we have to cross the bridge before 8 pm because it will be closed then so some “seismic safety work” can be done on one certain section of the roadway over the long Labor Day weekend. (Bridge engineers can check out the details here.)

Originally on the Lincoln Highway, one would have crossed the bay on a car ferry, but I can’t find any such service today. There are passenger ferries, but nothing that seems ready to take unexpected vehicles over the water. We have to take the bridge.

I am driving, Jarrett and Bob both shooting out the right-side windows, and Bob is ready to co-pilot me to California Street, having scoped out all the pertinent routes through downtown San Francisco on his trusty old AAA map.

We pull over near the intersection of California Street and Park Presidio Boulevard to find the next-to-last surviving concrete Lincoln Highway Marker from 1928. It’s beside a bus stop, and it’s probably still there because no one has ever cared enough to move or remove it. We grab a few shots.

We end up considering the markers as old friends along the way. They can be reassuring and inspiring when you think you’re hopelessly lost. They somehow still connect us to the 1920s and the Boy Scouts who helped put these markers at pertinent points all along the route. They seem to deserve respect simply for surviving.

This penultimate marker is mentioned on the penultimate page of Butko’s book. And in that same paragraph, he also describes where to find the final marker, and that’s where we’re headed.

I noticed some signs for Old Sacramento, and I suggest that there may be some interesting eateries there. Bob says there must be places right around this area for all the state government workers, and as we get back on the street, Bob sees a sign for the Capitol Cafe.

“We can probably get a sandwich there,” he says. “All we need is a parking space.” So we drive slowly, looking for a place to pull over, but there’s nothing really close. A block or two later, we see an empty meter on our side of 8th Street, a space in the shade, our favorite kind of parking spot, especially on a scorching, sunny day like this. It’s perfect.

As we lock things up, I say, “Hey, there’s a little place there right across the street. With the awning. It looks French. La Bonne Soupe Cafe. Let’s check it out.”

It’s a tiny place, one little room with maybe 6 or 7 wee tables along the left side and across the front. Most of the room is the cooking area where the chef is busy building sandwiches for the folks who are in line.

Every table is taken. We’re hot and sweaty. It doesn’t seem the easy or logical choice. Bob and Jarrett give it a quick once-over and go back outside to the sidewalk. I am intrigued but think we’ll probably walk back to the Capitol Cafe. I know it’s always good to ask for suggestions, so I turn to the people sitting along the side, “We’re from out of town. Where else can we get some lunch around here?”

Several guys look like construction workers, and they have no immediate ideas. A woman at the table near the door says, “You don’t want to go anywhere else. Can’t you wait? You won’t get a better lunch in Sacramento. This place is great. For the bread alone.”

Wow. I didn’t expect such a passionate endorsement. I go out and tell the guys. They agree to give it a try. Maybe a table will open up before our lunches are ready.

The handwritten menu looks great. The soups (or “potages” as it says) are all printed in plural: French onions, cream of vegetables and cream of mushrooms. And the sandwiches are all interesting possibilities, nothing like fast food.

But Bob and I both need a men’s room, and there’s none immediately apparent. Eventually the chef explains that it’s in the back hallway, but we find it’s locked, and the chef has to come back with a key. I say to Bob, “This seems VERY French in every way, including the weird restroom.”

As you stand in line, you learn the routine. The chef deals with each customer individually, getting that person’s entire order before moving on to the next person. He seems to care very much about the food, slicing all the ingredients for each sandwich as needed. It’s not a fancy place by any means, but the service is so personal that it feels very exclusive, and the crunch of the tiny loaves of bread as he cuts each one to order is totally enticing.

Standing in line, I also learn that the lamb is gone, and when Bob orders, he gets the final pork sandwich. Hmm. I will be happy to try the French garlic sausage. And I decide that I have to partake of the potage too, because this place is called La Bonne Soupe Cafe. The soupe has got to be bonne. I get the cream of vegetables, and Bob asks me to get him a bowl of cream of mushrooms too. By the time I get my food and sit down at our little table, Jarrett is done because he went first, and each order is completed in sequence. Actually I think I am the last person in line for the day.

The food is sublime. The sandwiches are served on the incredible little loaves. The soups are perfectly seasoned, richly flavored and smooth. Great soups. Even the bottled pop is French and delicious. This is a stupendous lunch.

Of course, as we finish, we strike up a conversation with the chef. He is French, from Lyon (where I had lived for a year back in 1973 and 74 when I was a student), and he used to have a restaurant in San Francisco called La Maison, but his life changed, and he moved here to Sacramento several years ago and created this lunch business which allows him to have more time and fewer worries, but he obviously still loves cooking and feeding people. His name is Daniel Pont, and his card identifies him as “Chef - Proprietaire.”

As a rule, I avoid having dessert at lunchtime, but today’s dessert special is creme brulee with Grand Marnier, two of my favorite things in the whole world, so I have to get one. Bob says he will have a taste. And Chef Daniel gets out his torch and finishes the sugary brulee after we have finished our lunches. Perfect timing. We are the last customers of the day; we close down the place.I love the fact that we stumbled onto this cafe because of a parking space and because that woman at the front table (who went back to work before we got our food) was so adamant about staying and waiting.

Of course, we explain to the chef what we’re doing, and we tell him how extraordinary his little restaurant is. We wish it were ON the Lincoln Highway, but it’s not far off, so we’ll get a few shots before we leave, and who knows what will bring us back to Sacramento, but we will stop again. And we will put him in this blog. Daniel says many people write about him on the internet (check out this site for examples.) It’s obvious: every town should have a careful and charming Frenchman making superb lunches, and every traveler should be so lucky as to find such a place.

Refreshed, satisfied, we buy several bottles of that French soda to take with us as we head out to hit the highway again.

Jarrett is driving, Bob is sitting in the passenger seat with the camera on his lap, occasionally grabbing a shot of California traffic or an unusual landscape. I’m in the back, trying to keep an eye on the road and the territory we’re crossing, all the while reading and trying to figure out what we’re missing as exit signs fly by.

This is Gold Rush country. This is where, in a cavern in a canyon, excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, forty-niner and his daughter Clementine. We were dreadful sorry that we had to just grab high speed glimpses of the area as we zipped by.

Colfax, Weimar, Auburn, Newcastle, Penryn, Loomis, Rocklin, Roseville, all are just signs along the interstate or mentions in Butko’s book. We can’t go in search of California stories today.

It’s 1:30 or so by the time we get to the Sacramento area, and rather than even try to find remnants of the Lincoln, we decide simply to follow signs for the capitol building. There’s one line in Butko that says, “The Lincoln Highway took drivers right to the state capitol,” so we decide we’ll take a look, grab a shot and continue on our way.

Of course, finding even a big domed capitol building is not easy in an unfamiliar city, and we get lost because of one-way streets and missed signs, but finally we are just across from the state capitol, and there’s a perfect parking space with time on the meter, so out come the cameras, the tripod, and the three of us.

There’s a rose garden very near our parking space, and it allows us to frame the capitol in some postcard-like shots. We are now purely tourists on the Lincoln Highway, and we tourists still stop to see and take snapshots of grand governmental buildings. But this being August 2007, nearing the end of the fourth year in the Schwarzenegger administration, we obviously wouldn’t mind a cameo appearance by the governor. Could we be so lucky? Ah, the many possible scenarios! Perhaps we’d see him leaving one of the beautiful buildings beside us and then watch him strolling over to the capitol itself? The Terminator returns to work after a quick lunch?

No such luck.

We get a few frames, make a video postcard (watch it), pack back into the van and consider grabbing some lunch before getting back on the interstate.