Heading Home

Saturday | 19 February 2000 | Merced, California: DT went for a run, while I put things away for our departure. We had everything ready to go, except for the power cord and the satellite dish, by the time GW had easily won their game over Rhode Island. We were on the road by 11:30 – heading north on Highway 10 to San Bernardino, then continuing north through Tehachapi Pass to Bakersfield. The weather was ugly, it was getting dark, but we were now only 2 hours from Merced, so we broke our “no RV driving after dark” rule and continued on to the Castle Air Museum campground. We were parked, set-up and over to Mom’s by 7:30 p.m. 
 
Monday | 21 February 2000 | Sacramento, California: We spent yesterday with family, but not getting enough family, we decided to head up to Sacramento and spend the day with Brother Steve and Gina. We had a blast golfing with Steve at his favorite course. We finally had a sunny, warm and calm day! Later, the four of us gorged ourselves on sushi and tempura – asparagus tempura is wonderful! We had a good, though too-short, visit and are heading home tomorrow. 
 
Tuesday | 22 February 2000| Phoenix, Oregon: We drove all the way to Phoenix! Phoenix, Oregon. Ha. Ha. (Between Ashland and Medford.) We left Sacramento a little before noon. We left late because the RV park, Cal-Expo, is directly across from a huge mall with an Aerosole shoe store. The new spring styles came out this week! Very exciting. Anyway, we headed north on I-5, stopping only twice. Once for left-overs from the fridge and the second time to re-diesel at a Pacific Pride station. The weather was just awful – very windy and we were tossed about our lane quite a bit. As we entered the Northern California/Southern Oregon mountain passes, it began to snow just a bit… snow mixed with rain, then snow flurries, then show showers and then (as my brother, Rick, would say: it was dumpin’. Then it was stickin’ and I was freakin’, but My Driver kept it very slow, used the exhaust brake, stayed in the slow lane with the truckers and we had a safe time. We just kept going, knowing it was only going to get worse and we were so happy we did not stop, because the freeway was later a mess, chains required, etc. It was getting dark when we pulled into a small RV campground just North of Ashland. They had large pull-through sites, so we did not have to un-hitch the BC2 and the lady claimed we had a view of the creek, but it was too dark to tell. I had made lasagna last night – ready to go in the oven, so we set up camp and I baked the lasagna while we watched GW v Xavier. Oh, gosh, that was some major ass-whoppin – according to My Driver.  I don’t know if any of you caught the game or not, but GW was down by more than 20 points SEVERAL times during the game, came back to being down 5 points, but finally lost by 12. It was UGLY. They had beat Xavier on February 5! “My Man” Chris Monroe nearly got into a fist fight and deMiranda had his finger either broken or dislocated – the tip of his middle finger was “swinging” around, totally grossing me out.