July 10, 2017 Monday Day 23 Sacramento CA to Oceanside CA

We shared a nice breakfast with Gere and Betty, and then said goodbye. Not so sad, because we will be returning again in just two weeks for a longer stay with them. So nice.

Time for the home stretch.  Dick always says on the way home “the horse smells the barn.”  This means, no stopping to sightsee, or worrying about what the gas mileage is.  Just fill the tank with gas and head towards LA as quickly as possible, trying to avoid as much of the traffic as we can manage.

The drive was long and hot.  The landscape mostly strikingly dry and tan.  At times, we could see the highly irrigated farmland to the East of the highway with the coastal mountains to the west.  

There were so many groves of trees that produce almonds and pistachios.  Obviously they want more of these trees since we often saw large fields of newly planted trees.

We also drove past areas that had burned in previous fires, and saw hazy smoke in the skies from fires burning towards Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.  We were happy that our route didn’t take us close to the fires, but were very aware of the dry, dry conditions and knowing it doesn’t take much for a major fire to take off with this type of conditions.   At times we could really feel the wind blowing, too.

We often save a couple of CD’s to listen to towards the end and were able to enjoy some great storytelling as well as a National Public Radio Driveways Moments CD.  Even during a 5000 mile trip, there aren’t as many stretch es of road where we want to listen to stories or music.

We made it to Los Angeles by 2:30 but still ran into the early rush hour traffic.  There were parts of the drive through the greater LA area that were a slow slog, but we made it in reasonable time, given the conditions.

We pulled into our new home at 5:00.  We were returning from a long road trip for the first time since we  moved this Spring.   Everything was safe and sound.  Indeed, there is “no place like home.”  A great trip and confirming that we didn’t find any place that we thought, “I wish we lived here instead of where we do live.”  Glad to be back, and we will move into the plans for the next trip soon.

July 9, 2017 Sunday Day 22 Eugene OR to Sacramento CA

On the road by 8:00, we were driving through the remainder of Oregon and half of California today.

We drove through a couple hundred miles in Oregon, enjoying the scenery. We had been driving in the Willamette Valley which had been the destination for the pioneers driving by wagon across the Oregon Trail.  Having crossed the country ourselves a number of times, we are also amazed at the thought of going so far by wagon, horseback or walking.  This is a big country.   The drive south towards to Siskiyou Mountains along the border with California was flush with such a wide range of greens: trees, grasses, and other plants.

But, nearly as soon as we crossed the mountains into California the color changed.  Everything here look very dry.  What a change to now see sage brush and brown clay soil.

We were so pleased when we started to get glimpses of Mt. Shasta in northern California.  That formerly active volcanic mountain grew larger and larger as we drove nearer and then around it.

Stopping for gas, we realized we were back in the extreme heart with the temperature being 105 F.  Hot!!!! We didn’t realize how hot it had gotten because we were in the air conditioned car.  It was 30 degree difference between the car and getting outside.

We stopped outside of Corning Capital, self-proclaimed “Olive Capital of California.” A company there is the second largest olive oil producer in the world.  They created a giant olive several miles outside of town, on the edge of olive groves.  Of course we had to go visit it.

We arrived in Sacramento at about 3:30.  There we spent a lovely evening with friends, Gere and Betty.  They are from Pennsylvania, and are out in Sacramento for a 1-3 year job that Gere has accepted with the Unite Methodist church conference in Northern CA and Northern Nevada.  We were glad to see their new apartment, gradually taking shape as a home.

We enjoyed a walk around the neighborhood seeing the canals.  They also have Redwood trees planted all around their apartment complex with water birds nesting in them.  We saw egrets, herons, and possibly some other birds.  They were gorgeous seeing them fly, and were surprisingly noisy as they fed their babies and sat n the nests.  They made sounds nearly all night long.

We had a lovely hot weather dinner of Nappa cabbage salad with watermelon for dessert.

So nice to catch up with old friends. Dick and Gere were in a men’s group together and worked together some 40 years ago in Dayton OH.  We are so happy to have them much closer in the same state rather than nearly 3000 miles away.  

July 8, 2017 Saturday Day 21 Federal Way WA to Eugene OR

After a hearty breakfast and hugs all around, we had to say goodbye to Aunt Alice.

The skies were blue and we were heading over to see Mount Rainier, which is visible from Seattle and Federal Way. 

It was supposed to be about an hour and half drive from her home.  Or so we thought.  We plugged Mt. Rainier National Park into our GPS and headed off on our way.  It didn’t seem to Dick to be the way we went before, but “Joanne” (our GPS voice) assured us “You are on the fastest route.”  So we drove.  It still didn’t seem quite right, as the roads got smaller, and eventually became gravel.  We had misplaced our large map, and so had only a small atlas map.  

But we could see Rainier and it was getting bigger, so we journeyed on.  

The scenery was so lovely and the air was cool and smelled of pine trees.  As we climbed into the hills surrounding the mountain, we could see so many wildflowers.  What a treat!

We found a sign welcoming us to the park.  Yay!  At last.  And expected to soon join the major main route through  park. After a time we saw lots of cars parked along side the gravel road and thought, “at last!”  However, finally, after seeing the hiking path trailheads where these cars and hikers were headed to, there was only a turnaround and a dead end.  This road stopped.  But we were no where near the core of the park, and so had to retreat and drive back on that gravel road about 15 miles.

We did throughout all of this keep having magnificent views of  Mt. Rainier.

 At last we came to an area with larger roads.  By this time we decided we would not try to go into the main part of the park, but would drive a lovely road that would loop around the park and then take us down to the Columbia River Gorge.  Great idea!  We found the route number on our map, found what we thought was the road and resumed driving.   We actually made it into the Park itself a couple of times, just not to the major tourist areas.

A lovely drive!  Great views of the Mt Rainier.  More wildflowers.  And, not many people.  We then decided to change our route again to take a more direct route to the Columbia Gorge, having found on our map a road that would go straight south to the River.   This was an even quieter road with many fewer people. The canopies of the trees covered the road. The light and shadow were gorgeous.  We drove and drove.  We stopped seeing our expected route numbers along the road.  We were now seeing signs for a Forest Service road.  We had the feeling of deja vu from the morning but the road was consistently a good asphalt highway, so we kept driving.  We weren't actually lost but were certainly unsure exactly where we were.

We finally saw a mountain that we thought was Mt. Hood.  Great!  A clue that we were going the right way. 

We also got some great views of Mt. St. Helens.  Wow!  We were fairly close to that mountain, but again on the opposite side of the main tourist area which we had previously visited.

We were still a bit nervous as to where in the world we were, when, at a lovely overlook of Mt. St. Helens, we met a great young couple.  They were able to give us not only some good information about where we actually were (the large mountain we saw was Mt. Adams, not Mt. Hood), but we still had been going in the right direction.  They were so kind to give us their National Forest map with all of the roads on it saying they would just get another pone when they got back to their campground.  Such kindness!

We made the decision that we really had had a great experience on this drive and chose to revisit the Gorge on another trip.  So we turned west for an hour and a half to get to the interstate.  Lovely driving, beautiful trees and a very pretty set of lakes.  What a nice area.

Not what we had planned for the day, but it worked out great.

From there we had another 3 hour drive south until we reached Eugene Oregon.  We really had the sense that we were on our way south to home.  A quick dinner at Denny’s restaurant next door and then we settled into our hotel. A great day, but time to rest to keep driving tomorrow.

July 7, 2017 Day 20 Friday Brewster WA to Federal Way WA

We stretched out our visit until late morning, enjoying those last moments with Gail.  What a delightful time we had had with her.

Then had to drive south and west to get to the coast for our next stop.  This meant driving along the Columbia River. We saw such a contrast between the dry hills above the mighty river and the green orchards irrigated along its shores.

It is from this valley that most of the nation’s apples are produced.  There are other crops growing there, too.   At many points, we saw huge stacks of large wooden boxes that would be soon filled with apples.  Seeing these empty boxes gave us such a dramatic sense of how many apples this region produces.

We  HAD to stop and buy fresh Rainier Cherries, and had a delightful conversation with an orchard owner who told us stories of the struggles of dealing with the drought and the lack of fruit over the past few years, as well as some the complications of bureaucratic rules in keeping his orchard certified in order to keep a large European customer.   Fortunately, this was a bountiful year, which made it look like they would not lose the orchard.  It is tough being a small farmer of anything. We took a few moments to watch the operation of sorting cherries for packing.  The people were pulling out the damaged fruit before the rest ended in a cherry shipping box. The cherries were fantastic!  Nothing like totally fresh fruit.

Finally we reached I-90 and turned west.  We had been seeing the Southern Cascade mountains to the west of us and now we crossed them.  They are quite beautiful.  We had spent time in the Northern Cascades on a previous trip.  It is a special range of mountains.

Before we knew it, we were stuck in Seattle traffic.  Not the most fun at rush hour.  We were driving south of Seattle to visit Patti’s Aunt Alice.  She is Patti’s dad’s oldest sister at age 93.

The visit was very fun and filled with catching up on family and telling old family stories and travel tales.  Alice was quite a traveler herself, and was the source of many names and addresses of the people we got to meet in Denmark,

Patti was able to get some videos of Alice telling some of her family stories.  Priceless!  It was so fun hearing about her childhood, her trip to Denmark now nearly 30 years ago, and other family memories. She was sad to not be joining her brother for his 25^th wedding anniversary celebration in Minnesota, but flying is not longer practical for her.

She loves company and was very gracious in her hosting of us, making sure we were well taken care of.