Redding - Murphy's - Day 3/4

Morning in Redding arrived way to early. Loud A/C at night, and not nearly enough blankets made for a short cold night. I beat the alarm and wandered over to the breakfast room to see what the situation was. Muscling my way in front of the kids at the waffle maker I grabbed a coffee and left for the great outdoors (parking lot) On the way back to the room, I stopped at the ice machine to fill my bottle and ended up patting a very hot Australian cattle dog. His master was loading up to head up to Whistler as it turned out, and he was looking forward to cooler temperatures. He was coaching a ski camp way up on the glacier. We talked about expensive ski towns, and he admitted he knew what that was all about, coming from Vail, Colorado as he had. We said goodbye, and wished each other good luck for the north/south trip.

We cleared out of Dodge after 9 and I took the first stint at the wheel. Miles upon miles of olive groves, corn crops, stone fruit trees and other pastures passed us by. The boys caught up on their beauty sleep, and we made it as far as Sacramento outskirts before we stopped for lunch.

We had a funny feeling that we’d barrelled too far down Highway 80 completely missing the turnoff for Highway 99 where we should have been. Sure enough we asked a senior in the Carl’s Jnr where we ate, and he verified that we’d REALLY ended up in the wrong direction. He was prepared to send us on another cross-country journey eventually ending up in Murphy’s, but luckily Norbert got on the phone to David who told him to ‘go back west, young man’! Back-tracking aways, we got to our highway and kept on driving and driving and driving. The highway turned skinnier and skinnier, and started climbing over wonderfully rolling hills. Alex said, after those, who needs Disneyland?! Great, I said! We got to Pat and Dave’s around 5, arriving at their lovely mountain home.

Dinner on the patio was wonderful, and the mosquitoes left us (almost) alone. The boys and Norbert learned the finer points of cribbage and horseshoes, and we enjoyed a nice evening together.

Today, the boys are off Frisbee golfing with Chris, Pat and Dave’s son-in-law, up at the local ski resort where Chris works. No camera went along on the trip, since Chris told Norbert that they’d be moving that fast, they wouldn’t want anything around their necks annoying them. I’m hoping that one of the boys will get a shot from their phones at least! It sounds like another adventure. Pat and I will join Ashley, her daughter who works part-time at one of the local wineries for some wine-tasting. We’ll join the boys later for lunch, and then a big family/friends dinner is on the agenda.

We’re encouraging the boys to join in and get engaged with everyone - hopefully this will happen as the days go by. I’m thinking that they’re not really sure yet what to make of everything they’ve found themselves in the middle of!

Day 2-3 Redding, California

We left Portland as early as humanly possible with two teenagers, and headed south towards California. A long day of driving was in our future. I took the wheel first and it was fairly clear sailing through the top half of the state. The weather was projected to be hot and steamy and it didn't look like the predictions were wrong this time. We had definitely left cool and cloudy Vancouver behind.

The farming country of the Oregon coast was beautiful, and made both of us wish that we had time to veer east and explore a bit further....not this trip unfortunately. Norbert took over at lunchtime in Roseburg, and the road climbed ever higher towards Grants Pass and the California border. Every time we hit the gas pedal on the Tacoma to climb those hills I could feel $10 going out the exhaust pipe! Oh well, best not to think about it at all! You'd drive yourself crazy for sure. It was beautiful countryside anyway, and we gradually came down the other side of the pass and beautiful Lake Shasta came into view. With lots of houseboats and motorboats spread out below us, it made us wish we were at our lovely Shuswap Lake - same beautiful sights. In fact a lot of the country we just came through made us think of \Kamloops and surrounds - deserty, scrubby, barren, but beautiful in its own way.

Redding was our overnight stop, and as Evan walked into our hotel, he pronounced it "Worst - hotel - EVER". :( Oh well, one night, how bad could it be?! The small pool was also rejected as sub-standard. Hey, it's WET! I told them, but no reaction! After supper, we took a late evening drive (NO THANKS TO MAGELLAN!! who took us down the highway away from it, turned us around again and promptly got us lost one more time) to the Sundial Bridge, the local landmark.

The bridge over the Shasta River is a marvel of architecture, designed by an Italian at great expense, with clear glass tiles underfoot over the entire pedestrian bridge, and great soaring spires that reflect the sun like a true sundial. It lights up beautifully at night, and we enjoyed the cool night air after a long days' driving heat. In a strange coincidence, we met a local guy that had spent some time in Kamloops years ago, and knew our northern Washington area very well too. Sometimes life is funny that way - if we hadn't got lost with our trusty GPS we wouldn't have met him and had a great conversation. Maybe I DO need to thank our GPS for something after all!

Heading to Pat & Dave |Hitchcock's today for our Sierra portion of the trip. It's going to be another great day!

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Day 1 down

Day 1 of the road trip went as well as could be expected. Norbert and I had last-minute jitters and second-guesses right up until driving away from the house. Dad is definitely not well, and Sue and Paul are shouldering all the work making sure that he gets better after his midnight ramble, and safe in the house with Mom. These last-minute worries always kind of overshadowed the adventure that we started today, but we are going to press on, knowing that we may have to abort the trip at some point if something serious happens in Kamloops. It is a real tear...the timing in some ways couldn't be worse, but we will try and salvage what we can, and savour the sights and sounds of the west coast of America as much as we can.

We finally made it across the border by 2:30 p.m. and headed due south to Seattle. We crawled straight into rush hour traffic, despite having the platinum 'HOV' lane status. It didn't seem to make a damn bit of difference! So much for organization on those roads - it was a spaghetti web of lane changes and fly overs...but eventually we crawled through it...right into the same mess at Tacoma.

Stopped for a bite at Tacoma and a quick coffee - Norbert, not me (regrettably). I took over the wheel there and made it to our Portland destination, but I was definitely fading. A/C on and Norbert's iPod playing (if I hear Neil Young's 'Helpless' one more time I'm going to push him out the passenger door!) got me through, and we only made 1 wrong freeway exit (NAVIGATOR error!) before we made it to the hotel.

I slept like a log, and from the looks of these two boys still snoozing beside me on the beds, so did they. We'll have a quick breakfast and head as far as Redding, CA today. They say it's hot down there - I say BRING IT ON! The rain & gray of Vancouver is behind us, for the time being. With any luck and our good family willing, we may get to experience a bit of it.