Heading for Sutherlin, OR 5-31-07

We were on the road by 9 today. Wanted to be out earlier, but allergies and weird sleep patterns have slowed us down a little. We were pushing for Sutherlin today, we wanted to get more than half way so we could get into Albany early. We never travel much over 65 mph, saves fuel and brakes. It was a beautiful day. As we were driving along Clear Lake I decided that because I have driven past it so many hundreds of times I take it for granted, so today I snapped some pictures as we were driving along so those of you that have never seen it can see a small part of it. I continued to do the same as we traveled north into Oregon. I forget that a lot of you may have never seen Shasta Lake or western Oregon.

I’ll leave you to do your own research on Clear Lake, but it is California’s largest natural lake (I think). To get to Interstate 5 from Ukiah you have to wind around the north shore of Clear Lake until you get old, then you wind up and down through the oak covered hills and canyons of Colusa County. There was road construction along the way so our time was extended by about 20 minutes…not bad really.

Traveling north along I-5 is pretty flat until you get north of Red Bluff and from then on you have a lot of grades to climb and descend all the way through Oregon. Makes it slow going and in Oregon to prevent accidents they have reduced the speeds and prohibit lane changes over most of their grades. People would get to flying around them and make bad choices and wreck.

We stopped and had a late lunch/early dinner in Yreka and didn’t arrive at the Sutherlin Escapee park until 7 p.m. We were boondocking for the night and being members it only costs $2.50 for the night. Boondocking is dry camping; no hook-ups at all. This RV Park is far from planes, trains, and automobiles and is very peaceful. There were jackrabbits and a couple of turkeys (the feathered variety) hanging around and the flowers on peoples lots were very pretty. We took a walk around after getting parked to stretch out the kinks, we had traveled 447 miles today, something we don’t usually do. It was a lovely, warm evening. We turned off the phone to conserve its battery and hit the feathers.

The first pictures are of Clear Lake and Mount Konocti. Then the pictures with the high banks are of a very small portion of Lake Shasta. Lake Shasta is a many “armed”, large man-made lake in northern California and I-5 passes over part of it. The picture of Mount Shasta is from I-5 above Weed.