The Trip South: Part 2

 We spent a little time in Red Bluff before we took off.  We needed to restock our groceries and make the coach our home again. 

 For those of you who have never been there, Red Bluff is a cute little town. This photo, taken from Main Street shows Mt. Lassen in the distance.  One of those neat little serendipity places we have often run into.

 This is the view down Main Street in Red Bluff at night.  to the right is one of our favorite Mexican Restaurants, "Los Mariachis".  The food is excellent and the prices reasonable.

 Lots of cute little stores, like this antique shop next to the Mexican restaurant.

 The next day was pretty routine, but the second day out, we were driving through Stockton, CA when alarms started sounding and lights started flashing.  We were fortunate to be able to find a place to pull off the road.  Here we are on the hook.  Another story for our memory book.

 We spent the next week in the Lathrop, California Comfort Inn.  Nothing wrong with it.  We've stayed in far worse places, but we've both become spoiled by the luxury of our coach.  Lathrop was a bit forgettable, but we learned where to shop and eat.  If we had known it was going to take a week, we would have gone to San Francisco, but ....  Thank goodness we like each other.  

 We did get back on the road, and continued to one of our favorite stops, Orange Grove RV Park, just outside Bakersfield.  As the name implies, and this photo shows, it is in the middle of an orange grove.  Yes, they do encourage you to pick oranges, and we took only those that had good sugar spots.  Looked bad, would probably have been rejected by your local Safeway, but they tasted great.  Reminded us of the oranges we got used to when we had trees in our back yard in San Diego.  We had to stay an extra day here due to snow and wind in the Tehachapi pass.  The temperatures were below freezing at night.  We felt sorry for the orange growers.  We knew they had some long nights.

 We finally did make it to our winter quarters here in Palm Desert.  Doors and windows open, short sleeved shirts, sandals, the company of friends and cousins who overwinter,  Penny's brother and sister-in-law not far, and good restaurants---

---and the company of Marilyn and others.  This sculpture was in Chicago, but now resides in Palm Springs.  We tried to catch the old man behind looking up her dress, but he caught on and returned our look.  Off to dinner with friends and a live musical at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs tomorrow.  Probably, at least one more show there or at one of the local casinos where several of the big names play before we leave.
Life on the road is good!  

The Trip South: First Leg

We started our trip south on December 28th. We had taken the coach through the Siskiyous shortly after Thanksgiving and left it in Red Bluff, California. That negated the need to winterize and made our trip through the Siskiyous in late December less problematic since we could do that part in the Jeep.

As we drove through the lush pastures of the Williamette Valley, we noted two things.  First, whether we looked east toward the Cascades or West toward the Coast Range, we could see plenty of snow in the mountains.  We also saw many more sheep than we were accustomed to seeing.  I guess either lamb or wool is bringing a good price these days.

Encouragingly, we saw a lot more mill activity than we had seen the last several years.  Outside a peeler plant, piles of thin sheets of wood wait to be glued into plywood panels.

We saw lots of other RVs on the road.

Around noon we began to ascend into the foothills of the Siskiyous.  The deciduous trees here are covered with lichens.  Despite appearances, they cause no damage to the trees since they make their own food and extract their own water from the atmosphere.

A few miles further on, we began to see snow on the roadsides.

Near the Siskiyou Summit, there was more snow on the road, but there were only a few places with snow in all four lanes.  We would have been able to traverse this in the RV, but were glad we didn't have to do it.

A few miles into Northern California, the sun began to peek through the clouds, and the road became much clearer.  We were able to relax and enjoy the scenic drive.

We were tired by the time we arrived in Red Bluff, but it was good to be back in our coach.  So far, this trip was proceeding exactly as we had planned it.