I have saved. And I have also restarted the game. 

So I took a family I regularly play on vacation to France.  When France finished loading, the enitre family had vanished; instead, all I could do was pan around France.  I can't seem to leave France and get back to Sunset Valley either.  Any thoughts on how this might be fixed or what fuel I should use to burn my copy of WA?

Just to update -- I drastically reduced my CC and my save time is back to normal.  I am not sure at this point if it is one file or just the amount of CC I had that was causing the problem,  but I am going to slowly add back and see.

One I is more than enough in Time -- sorry if the typo offends.

In any event, thanks for all the replies.  I think that the solution seems to be to remove my CC and slowly add back. 

My game in now taking forever too save -- sometime 20 to 30 minutes or more.  We just installed a brand new high end graphics card and also installed some new memory cards so the RAM should be sufficient.  My instincts are that I have too much CC, although I really don't have that much yet.  I had much CC more in Sims 2 and didn't have this problem.  I read that saving the game periodicially would held the extended save time using save and quit, but all that really does for me is that save time during the game is really really long -- nothing is shortened.  Is there another solution short of removing my CC?  Thanks!