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dolariMonday, August 11th
We woke up bright and early, Emily brighter and earlier than me, with the pickup all packed already (she's industrious!). With Bon leaving for work at 7, we saw her off and left ourselves a few minutes later.
The evening before we'd decided to cut the San Fran/Seattle trip in half, I'd originally set it as a 13 hour drive - but our 10 and 11 hour plans were becoming 12, 13 and 14 hours that we figured 13 hours would quickly become 24 hours. Emily decided to cut it to 8 hours as the Google flies, which actually became 12 hours driving time - which is what I'd originally wanted from Day One...but didn't get at all.
Our first stop, though, was to head back to Danville. Mission of Mercy! We'd brought two cases of Big Red for Amy, but forgot to give them to her! And considering how early it was, we decided to be the Big Red Fairies and leave them by her doorstep rather than wake her up. After our mercy mission, we headed back out of San Francisco towards IH 5 via 80. 80 was kinda the last real reminder of my past. Where US 87 was the end of my Texas Pass, 80 was the end of any real reminder of home for me (80 being the main highway near my home in Pennsylvania). From here on out - nothing to remind me of home.
Yeah, I get sentimental at highways. I'm a roadgeek. It's what I do.
All along the way, we'd notice small smudges of red on the road. Some weren't so small. We really had trouble figuring out where all the red was coming from till we noticed there were trucks and trucks and trucks of tomatos driving by us as well. Just piled in the trailers where the wind would grab a few and toss them on the road.
The drive down IH 5 was uneventful, more of the long stretch of valley, like we'd seen through most of the previous IH 5 trip. The only thing breaking up the monotony was a brown haze we couldn't figure out that was coming from the west. At first we thought it was fog, it was still early in the morning, but when it started turning brown, we knew that wasn't it. And then the smoke smell came across. We were driving next to one of the uncontrolled California wildfires. They were over the mountain from us, but the smoke was coming across loud and clear.
I do have pictures of the smoke, but they're just brown haze over the mountains - so I won't post them here. They just look like foggy pics.
About noon we made it into redding, a planned pitstop to hit the last In-N-Out before we left California. Our welcome to Redding was...shall we say...unique.
When I take pics like this, I'm usually hanging outside the pickup, with my camera on the other side of the windshield. If you'll notice, there's a guy standing on the bridge.
This guy here.
He took it upon himself to give me the greatest greeting Redding could possibly have given me on crossing the city limits. He ran at our pickup screaming "GODDAMMIT, FUCK YOU!!!"
Ah, California....
The funniest part? The next street up from this bridge? "Friendly Street."
We pulled in, checked the water in the pickup (which was running a little hot), did our business, and got lunch and the In-N-Out. We had a bit more time studying the "Secret" menu so we knew what more to get this time:
Two Double Doubles, Animal Style (Extra toast on mine), two fries (light fries for me), two Cokes. :9
Again, it's not Whataburger...but it's damned good.
As we wound our way north from Redding, we came across Lake Shasta, and the first of the volcanos, Mt. Shasta. Paranormal Nexus of the California near the town of Weed (I kid you not). It was the first glimpse of the mountains I'd start seeing from the freeways, the closer we got to Washington.
In the mad scramble to find my camera, I noticed...my camera was GONE. Not in my duffel bag, not in my glove compartment - just GONE. And then I remembered - when I got a pic of the In N Out, I LEFT IT ON THE TARP.
We squealed to the side of the road, and sure enough, sitting gently nestled on the tarp in the back of the pickup - my camera. No worse for wear. Holy carp. We smuggled it back in, but not before grabbing a shot of Mt. Shasta.
The last little bit of the trip through California was all uphill from here as the Valley ended and the mountains began to take over, and the truck huffed and puffed it's way to the Oregon border, getting hotter and hotter as it climbed. Just at the border, it got too hot to keep going, so we pulled over right at Welcome to Oregon sign for a 30 minute cool down. That poor poor truck.
However, at the border, I was able to climb up on the pickup and grab this gorgeous shot (we were right on the pass, looking down into the valley below).
We pulled into Medford, to grab some drinks (it was still pretty hot, even for Oregon!) and get our bearings. Did you know all the gas pumps in ORegon are Full Serve? Really! Thanksfully, we knew better than to get gas there, as it was horribly overpriced, even for the horribly overpriced prices we pay now.
Emigrant Lake, Ashland, Oregon and friends.
Now, if you'll remember, when I first started this trip, we were all about the kitsch. Sadly, much of the kitsch had dwindled out by now...our sources just didn't have much up this way. However, that isn't to say, we weren't still on the lookout. Or that we didn't find anything.
Such as this gigantic caveman greeting people to Grant's Pass by threatening to club them.
Or this electric yellow bear celebrating the day...someone did something to someone else. In Russia. It was a ll kinda cryptic, really.
The trip went on through the hills and mountains of Oregon, making our way to Eugene. It reminded me a lot of the Texas Hill Country, although with taller peaks and steeper roads. As if it was scaled up 25%.
We were quicking running out of sunlight as we made our approach to Eugene. I used the last of it to grab a picture of my "workstation" on the passenger side of the pickup. The glove compartment door was open and flipped down...
Tucked into the space was our atlas, so we knew where we were going. Behind the atlas were various notes we'd both made (Roadside America notes for me, and railroad notes for Emily). At the bottom of the map, tucked into the edge of the open glove compartment tray are the two sidekicks. The old Sidekick 3 on the left and the new Sidekick 2008 on the right. these were my lifelines to the outside world, and in fact, were my sole means of blogging the whole trip (Katrus joked that my move should have been sponsored by T-Mobile...if only I'd thought about that sooner). One thing you might notice is the SK3 is powered on. The 2008 has a great battery, but the way I was using it (uploading Twitters, uploading pictures in real time, updating Livejournal) I ate the batteries up (like what happened that first day in Texas). My backup was to charge the SK3 as well as the SK2008, and use the SK3 when the battery died, as it did here. Same fuinctionality, just lower resolution images on the screen and in pictures.
We made it into Eugene at 8PM, exactly 13 hours after we left San Francisco. This is how I WISHED our trip had gone. We had time to rest, relax, catch up on news, and have a nice dinner. We slept, knowing tomorrow would be The Big Day - Seattle.
The truck gets some shuteye, seen through the Motel 6 Peephole.
We woke up bright and early, Emily brighter and earlier than me, with the pickup all packed already (she's industrious!). With Bon leaving for work at 7, we saw her off and left ourselves a few minutes later.
The evening before we'd decided to cut the San Fran/Seattle trip in half, I'd originally set it as a 13 hour drive - but our 10 and 11 hour plans were becoming 12, 13 and 14 hours that we figured 13 hours would quickly become 24 hours. Emily decided to cut it to 8 hours as the Google flies, which actually became 12 hours driving time - which is what I'd originally wanted from Day One...but didn't get at all.
Our first stop, though, was to head back to Danville. Mission of Mercy! We'd brought two cases of Big Red for Amy, but forgot to give them to her! And considering how early it was, we decided to be the Big Red Fairies and leave them by her doorstep rather than wake her up. After our mercy mission, we headed back out of San Francisco towards IH 5 via 80. 80 was kinda the last real reminder of my past. Where US 87 was the end of my Texas Pass, 80 was the end of any real reminder of home for me (80 being the main highway near my home in Pennsylvania). From here on out - nothing to remind me of home.
Yeah, I get sentimental at highways. I'm a roadgeek. It's what I do.
All along the way, we'd notice small smudges of red on the road. Some weren't so small. We really had trouble figuring out where all the red was coming from till we noticed there were trucks and trucks and trucks of tomatos driving by us as well. Just piled in the trailers where the wind would grab a few and toss them on the road.
The drive down IH 5 was uneventful, more of the long stretch of valley, like we'd seen through most of the previous IH 5 trip. The only thing breaking up the monotony was a brown haze we couldn't figure out that was coming from the west. At first we thought it was fog, it was still early in the morning, but when it started turning brown, we knew that wasn't it. And then the smoke smell came across. We were driving next to one of the uncontrolled California wildfires. They were over the mountain from us, but the smoke was coming across loud and clear.
I do have pictures of the smoke, but they're just brown haze over the mountains - so I won't post them here. They just look like foggy pics.
About noon we made it into redding, a planned pitstop to hit the last In-N-Out before we left California. Our welcome to Redding was...shall we say...unique.
When I take pics like this, I'm usually hanging outside the pickup, with my camera on the other side of the windshield. If you'll notice, there's a guy standing on the bridge.
This guy here.
He took it upon himself to give me the greatest greeting Redding could possibly have given me on crossing the city limits. He ran at our pickup screaming "GODDAMMIT, FUCK YOU!!!"
Ah, California....
The funniest part? The next street up from this bridge? "Friendly Street."
We pulled in, checked the water in the pickup (which was running a little hot), did our business, and got lunch and the In-N-Out. We had a bit more time studying the "Secret" menu so we knew what more to get this time:
Two Double Doubles, Animal Style (Extra toast on mine), two fries (light fries for me), two Cokes. :9
Again, it's not Whataburger...but it's damned good.
As we wound our way north from Redding, we came across Lake Shasta, and the first of the volcanos, Mt. Shasta. Paranormal Nexus of the California near the town of Weed (I kid you not). It was the first glimpse of the mountains I'd start seeing from the freeways, the closer we got to Washington.
In the mad scramble to find my camera, I noticed...my camera was GONE. Not in my duffel bag, not in my glove compartment - just GONE. And then I remembered - when I got a pic of the In N Out, I LEFT IT ON THE TARP.
We squealed to the side of the road, and sure enough, sitting gently nestled on the tarp in the back of the pickup - my camera. No worse for wear. Holy carp. We smuggled it back in, but not before grabbing a shot of Mt. Shasta.
The last little bit of the trip through California was all uphill from here as the Valley ended and the mountains began to take over, and the truck huffed and puffed it's way to the Oregon border, getting hotter and hotter as it climbed. Just at the border, it got too hot to keep going, so we pulled over right at Welcome to Oregon sign for a 30 minute cool down. That poor poor truck.
However, at the border, I was able to climb up on the pickup and grab this gorgeous shot (we were right on the pass, looking down into the valley below).
We pulled into Medford, to grab some drinks (it was still pretty hot, even for Oregon!) and get our bearings. Did you know all the gas pumps in ORegon are Full Serve? Really! Thanksfully, we knew better than to get gas there, as it was horribly overpriced, even for the horribly overpriced prices we pay now.
Emigrant Lake, Ashland, Oregon and friends.
Now, if you'll remember, when I first started this trip, we were all about the kitsch. Sadly, much of the kitsch had dwindled out by now...our sources just didn't have much up this way. However, that isn't to say, we weren't still on the lookout. Or that we didn't find anything.
Such as this gigantic caveman greeting people to Grant's Pass by threatening to club them.
Or this electric yellow bear celebrating the day...someone did something to someone else. In Russia. It was a ll kinda cryptic, really.
The trip went on through the hills and mountains of Oregon, making our way to Eugene. It reminded me a lot of the Texas Hill Country, although with taller peaks and steeper roads. As if it was scaled up 25%.
We were quicking running out of sunlight as we made our approach to Eugene. I used the last of it to grab a picture of my "workstation" on the passenger side of the pickup. The glove compartment door was open and flipped down...
Tucked into the space was our atlas, so we knew where we were going. Behind the atlas were various notes we'd both made (Roadside America notes for me, and railroad notes for Emily). At the bottom of the map, tucked into the edge of the open glove compartment tray are the two sidekicks. The old Sidekick 3 on the left and the new Sidekick 2008 on the right. these were my lifelines to the outside world, and in fact, were my sole means of blogging the whole trip (Katrus joked that my move should have been sponsored by T-Mobile...if only I'd thought about that sooner). One thing you might notice is the SK3 is powered on. The 2008 has a great battery, but the way I was using it (uploading Twitters, uploading pictures in real time, updating Livejournal) I ate the batteries up (like what happened that first day in Texas). My backup was to charge the SK3 as well as the SK2008, and use the SK3 when the battery died, as it did here. Same fuinctionality, just lower resolution images on the screen and in pictures.
We made it into Eugene at 8PM, exactly 13 hours after we left San Francisco. This is how I WISHED our trip had gone. We had time to rest, relax, catch up on news, and have a nice dinner. We slept, knowing tomorrow would be The Big Day - Seattle.
The truck gets some shuteye, seen through the Motel 6 Peephole.
