It was time for our 4th year adventures to begin. It was a hard decision to leave this time, but warm weather was calling. How could we refuse?
We left on Black Friday, November 23rd. What a great day to leave. Everyone was either shopping or watching football. No traffic. We stopped at our 3 go to campgrounds along the way, Albany, Or., Weed, Ca. and Patterson, Ca. These are great stops when you are on the road. All pullthru's with cable. No putting up the dish or unhooking. For the first 1 1/2 days, it poured rain. Very stressful for Denny, but he is an excellent driver. The stressful part is other drivers that have to cut in front of you, not realizing how long it takes a 50' long truck/rv to stop. Just as we got to the Siskiyou Mountains, the skies cleared up, blue sky and we even put sunglasses on. YAHOO! FINALLY! The Siskiyou mountain weather is our decision maker on when to leave. It is a very steep mountain range on the Oregon/California border. In 9 minutes we climbed 1854' and then back down in the same amount of time. Eventho the pass is short and steep, there is actually 100 miles of up and down mountains before the Siskiyous and another 100 miles after. You actally have over 200 miles of mountains to go thru. Denny is always glad to get down to flat land at Redding.
In those 3 days, we spent $393.53 on diesel. When you only get 9 miles to the gallon, you go to the gas station everyday. By the time we got to Patterson, Ca. (southeast of San Fransico), we had gone 869 miles.
When we got to Weed, Ca, our first stop past the summit of the Siskiyous, Denny had to do some maintenance on the truck. When he drove the Monster to the house for loading, he had to raise the tires off the ground for leveling. Somehow a spring on a tire twisted upside down. Very bad for the tire. He didn't notice it until the 2nd day. We got to Weed early enough for him to fix it. He had to take the tire off and somehow turn the spring around. It is so great and handy to have a guy that knows how to work on the truck/rv himself.
I am a little late in starting my blog because we are in a valley and the internet connections are very bad and very SLOW. I tried to upload some pictures, but no luck. Hopefully the next place will be better. Might have to put them all on at once.
We will miss our family and friends, but will keep in touch with phone, email and blog.
See you next year
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