A Catch-up Day

Mount Shasta was out in all of its glory yesterday as we drove south on Interstate 5. It always surprises me how mountainous southern Oregon is. We didn't leave too early as the weather forecast had said there would be black ice early in the morning. By the time we came through the several passes the roads were pretty much bare and dry, though there was as much as a foot of snow in places.

In the Siskiyou Mountains, you go through the highest pass on I5 at 4315 feet, then pop out into the high valleys of northern California with Mount Shasta shining in the sun.

We came as far as Orland, California yesterday and are staying at Old Orchard RV Park. We had stayed here when we came through last March. Old Orchard is an older RV Park with a somewhat unusual layout -- the 52 pull-through sites are all in a large circle. You drive around the outside of the circle and pull into your site. When it's time to leave, you just pull out into the inner circle and drive out. The center and the outside of the circle are all planted with walnut and almond trees of the original orchard. It was very pretty when we were here in the spring, but of course now the trees are all bare.

We'll spend today here, catching up on chores and being lazy. We need to plan our route to Arizona and make some plans -- albeit in Jello -- for the next couple of weeks.

Back on the Road!

We're back on the road again and it feels good! We left Hubbard this morning headed for Camper World in Wilsonville for an oil change and for them to try one more time to install the stabilizer. We didn't bother to hook up the toad as it was such a short distance and we knew we would have to just unhook again for them to get the RV in the service bay. I just followed Forry and the motorhome. The sun was shining at Hubbard (after a whole night of down pouring rain) but Wilsonville had about an inch of new show on the ground. Most of it was off on the freeway, but the parking lot at Camper World was a sheet of ice where no one had driven. This time they did have the RIGHT bracket!

We had to run back Daughter Dawn's (20 miles or so) with the toad while they were working on the RV as she called to tell me that I had left my plastic box of sewing machine needles behind. That doesn't sound too bad, but at $5-6 a packet and about 30 different kinds, it was worth the trip. We gave the grandkids one last hug and were on our way again.

By the time we returned to Camper World, they had all of the work done and had even done their test drive, so we hooked up the Jeep and took off about 12:30 finally heading south on Interstate 5! It was a funny drive -- we went from sunshine to rain to snow to slush and back again.

After hearing some RVer's talking about it on the CB, we decided to stop and spend the night at the new Seven Feathers RV Resort near Roseburg. We had dinner at the casino seafood buffet, then soaked in the hot tub just across from Auntie Violet. The weather forecast is talking about snow tonight for the pass into Californa, so we may just stay here for a day or two. It's a nice place.