California to Oregon

Well, here goes our first blog (hope this works!). We are off for a 7 week cruise into Oregon in our Hitchhiker 5th wheel RV.The first part of our trip basically had one objective and that was simply get to Oregon. Leaving Huntington Beach on Friday June 13 (no concern for Firday the 13th, Mom said just snap your fingers, so I did, over and over!) We zoomed up 99 and then 5 with several one night stops. Home to Bakersfield was a pretty tough trip including lots of L.A. gummy traffic plus a hazardous material spill on the Grapevine that shut down the south bound passage. Next stops included Delhi, Dunnigan and Redding. Redding was of some interest, staying at the Mountain Gate RV resort. The RV park is very nice, I would recommend it. The big attraction for us was the Sundial Walking bridge and botanical gardens. This bridge is a must see, awesome, and the gardens are great.

The drive into Oregon is really very pretty. Tons and tons of trees, beautiful vistas, all you would expect. We did have one incident, thankfully it turned out to be minor, but it shook us up at the time. We were on a mountain pass, fortunately 4 lane, doing maybe 50 mph. We come around a corner and there smack dab exactly in front of us is a California Hwy patrol guy standing in the lane! I crammed on the breaks, trying to stop my 22,000# load and veered into the other, thank God, empty lane. We missed but not by a bunch. The CHP guy was trying to get some fallen lumber out of the road, but was doing so on a blind corner with no help nor any warning. (Who do you think would lose the court case!)

I'll pick up on our first Oregon stop on the next post.