A Smokey End to the Summer Road

Monday night in Coos Bay, the rains came steadily almost all night. When we awoke Tuesday morning at 0600 the rain had been over long enough that the streets were actually beginning to dry. We tuned in the local news on television to hear the weather broad say that scattered showers could be expected all over the area west of the Cascades throughout the day.

We set about getting ready to leave only to have the skies open up again just as we were about to attach the Jeep to the back of the motorhome. We waited that cell out and finally got underway.

All of the way from Coos Bay, to Interstate 5 we did indeed have scattered showers. Ron was frustrated when we hit I-5 as the GPS said we were now 8 miles further from home than when we left Coos Bay, and we had been on the road for 2 hours.

It's true, unfortunately. There is no straight line road from the coast inland and the way out of Coos Bay, goes way north before reaching I-5.

Shortly after starting south on the Interstate the rain began in earnest and rained steadily (and at times very heavily) all of the way south to Ashland.

From Ashland to Redding, CA, the roads dried out except for one brief shower near Lake Shasta.

Redding was very warm on our arrival at an RV Park there. We slept with the windows open for the first time in a while and awoke this morning to the smell of smoke in the air. TV news again informed us of a huge wildfire off to our east that was spreading smoke into the central valley as far south as Chico and Paradise.

We hit the road with a tailwind averaging about 20-25 mph helping our fuel mileage a lot. However, when we turned east in Colusa that wind hit us squarely in the side and driving was very difficult for about 30 miles. Wind gusts were reported as high as 45 and I think we experienced a few of those.

That pall of smoke had reached Marysville and a telephone call home to son Kevin revealed it was also in Grass Valley. It was so bad that grandson Alexs' class at school could not go outside for recess.

The sun shone as a partially obscured orange blob in the sky and the winds decreased the further east we went.

It is very smokey here at home and the smell is very strong. The wildfire is easily 80 or 90 miles away but we're still getting the effect. Smoke has now been reported as far away as Bakersfield, about 300 miles south of here.

We'll look forward to an onshore breeze that will blow the smoke into some other yard and leaves us with clear skies again.

It's good to be home though. Our 2-month trip was fun and we saw lots of neat stuff and met some new folks are reacquainted again with some old friends. We did manage to get in a nice breakfast with Dick and Kathleen, ham radio friends for many years, in Eugene. And, of course, Dave and Sue from Arizona.

Now it's time to start planning for our winter departure about 1 November.