March 3
We drove 650 miles today, and it was not bad at all. Our little U-Haul trailer is a breeze to haul, and even though “NEVER exceed 45mph” is clearly printed on it in several places, we’ve been tooling along at 55-60 for most of the day.
Nancy and I left Everett at 6am, stopped in Tumwater for breakfast, and were in Oregon before lunch time. In Sutherlin, south of Eugene, Nancy steered us to the coolest little coffee and lunch place she remembered from a previous tour. Called something like “White Horses” it indeed does have several huge white horse sculptures in front of it.
And sea-monster sculptures behind. 
And very nice horse paintings hanging inside, all of these created by the proprietress. And inside also, an aviary full of several dozen finches and a couple of parrots. Quite a remarkable place! After an excellent lunch (and of course a latte for me and tea for Nancy) we were on our way again.
Soon I began to notice that the deciduous trees on the hillsides looked to be well into leafing out into pretty, pale blue-green. But no, it’s some sort of lichen, covering every twig and branch for miles and miles. Is this normal? An infestation that’s killing forests? Time, and a google search, will tell.
Soon we began climbing the first of a series of many mountain passes. First 1700 feet. Next 2000 feet. Just past the California border we came in sight of beautiful Mt. Shasta, and then we really started climbing. Neither of us has ever driven through here before so we were surprised to find ourselves well up into the snow with a 4500 foot pass. When we stopped in the mountain resort town of Shasta for gas, there were 4-foot piles of snow in the middle of the street…. Which they just got early this morning, and if we’d come through just a bit earlier we’d have been stuck, with chains required on the freeway.
The snow and mountains were fabulously beautiful, but 4 hours of winter is enough, and I am happy to be down in the relatively low lands of Redding for the night, heading back into spring tomorrow.
March 4th
Another 600+ mile day, mostly through endless groves of blooming orchards. Literally hundreds and hundreds of miles of olive, almond, grape, and who knows what all. Beautiful but a bit monotonous after the first 5 hours or so. We passed one horrifically huge feedlot, very smelly, and another that looked a lot like it but was full of dairy cows. OK, I’m really going to stop eating beef.
We got into the greater LA metroplex right at rush hour and enjoyed our last couple of hours crawling through traffic, finally finding a nice, reasonably priced Best Western in one of the southeast outlying suburbs. It was a perfect place to stay except for the long, loud argument outside our door at 3am.
March 5th
Here we are in Phoenix, or at least in Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix. Though we got in early tonight, just after 5, the first two hotels we tried were full, and we got the very last 2-bed room, a smoking one, at this hotel. Everyone and their brother is down here to watch baseball spring training.
We had a leisurely start this morning and took the time to drive through Joshua Tree National Park, well worth the 2-3 hour side trip. It’s in high desert mountains 4000-5000 feet. The rock formations are indescribable, but all the same I’ll try. Some of the hills just look like big piles of gravel, but instead of pea-gravel, imagine car-gravel, or even house-gravel. Then there are just big rocks and bluffs of every conceivable size and shape.
And everywhere that’s not rock, there are, of course Joshua trees. 
They look a bit like yucca, if yucca grew into many-branched, 20-foot-tall trees, bu
t are actually a member of the lily family. There are whole forests of them, but a thick forest here means maybe one every 30 feet or so.
We drove up to and overlook where you can see forever , with a very good view of the San Andreas fault, which really does look like a big crack in the ground running for many hundreds of miles. You also get a view of the vast wind farm we drove through on the way here; there must be thousands of wind turbines, some in the valley, some on the ridge tops.
We drove 650 miles today, and it was not bad at all. Our little U-Haul trailer is a breeze to haul, and even though “NEVER exceed 45mph” is clearly printed on it in several places, we’ve been tooling along at 55-60 for most of the day.
Nancy and I left Everett at 6am, stopped in Tumwater for breakfast, and were in Oregon before lunch time. In Sutherlin, south of Eugene, Nancy steered us to the coolest little coffee and lunch place she remembered from a previous tour. Called something like “White Horses” it indeed does have several huge white horse sculptures in front of it.
And sea-monster sculptures behind. 
And very nice horse paintings hanging inside, all of these created by the proprietress. And inside also, an aviary full of several dozen finches and a couple of parrots. Quite a remarkable place! After an excellent lunch (and of course a latte for me and tea for Nancy) we were on our way again.Soon I began to notice that the deciduous trees on the hillsides looked to be well into leafing out into pretty, pale blue-green. But no, it’s some sort of lichen, covering every twig and branch for miles and miles. Is this normal? An infestation that’s killing forests? Time, and a google search, will tell.
Soon we began climbing the first of a series of many mountain passes. First 1700 feet. Next 2000 feet. Just past the California border we came in sight of beautiful Mt. Shasta, and then we really started climbing. Neither of us has ever driven through here before so we were surprised to find ourselves well up into the snow with a 4500 foot pass. When we stopped in the mountain resort town of Shasta for gas, there were 4-foot piles of snow in the middle of the street…. Which they just got early this morning, and if we’d come through just a bit earlier we’d have been stuck, with chains required on the freeway.
The snow and mountains were fabulously beautiful, but 4 hours of winter is enough, and I am happy to be down in the relatively low lands of Redding for the night, heading back into spring tomorrow.
March 4th
Another 600+ mile day, mostly through endless groves of blooming orchards. Literally hundreds and hundreds of miles of olive, almond, grape, and who knows what all. Beautiful but a bit monotonous after the first 5 hours or so. We passed one horrifically huge feedlot, very smelly, and another that looked a lot like it but was full of dairy cows. OK, I’m really going to stop eating beef.
We got into the greater LA metroplex right at rush hour and enjoyed our last couple of hours crawling through traffic, finally finding a nice, reasonably priced Best Western in one of the southeast outlying suburbs. It was a perfect place to stay except for the long, loud argument outside our door at 3am.
March 5th
Here we are in Phoenix, or at least in Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix. Though we got in early tonight, just after 5, the first two hotels we tried were full, and we got the very last 2-bed room, a smoking one, at this hotel. Everyone and their brother is down here to watch baseball spring training.
We had a leisurely start this morning and took the time to drive through Joshua Tree National Park, well worth the 2-3 hour side trip. It’s in high desert mountains 4000-5000 feet. The rock formations are indescribable, but all the same I’ll try. Some of the hills just look like big piles of gravel, but instead of pea-gravel, imagine car-gravel, or even house-gravel. Then there are just big rocks and bluffs of every conceivable size and shape.
And everywhere that’s not rock, there are, of course Joshua trees. 
They look a bit like yucca, if yucca grew into many-branched, 20-foot-tall trees, bu
t are actually a member of the lily family. There are whole forests of them, but a thick forest here means maybe one every 30 feet or so.We drove up to and overlook where you can see forever , with a very good view of the San Andreas fault, which really does look like a big crack in the ground running for many hundreds of miles. You also get a view of the vast wind farm we drove through on the way here; there must be thousands of wind turbines, some in the valley, some on the ridge tops.
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