The Lowe Down

  June 30, 2022 We began our trip today by driving down the Sacramento Valley through orchards of walnuts, almonds, olives and oranges.   Mile after mile of orchards.   We then turned east and climbing into the Sierra Nevada mountains.   The first part of the trip after the valley was through farmland and then we began our climb.   Traffic was really heavy on this backroad and there was construction that helped to slow us down even more.   Even when we got to I-80 traffic was heavy.   Thank goodness for 3 uphill lanes when climbing these big “hills”.   Forty-five to fifty miles per hour was the best that we could maintain as we climbed.   At the top we went trough Donner Summit.   There was a pretty rest area showing a lot of the beauty of the Sierras.   Our goal today was Verdi, NV a small community on the border of Nevada and California.   In fact, part of our campground is in California and the office and adjoining casino...

  June 29 This morning we began the first step toward heading home.   Leaving the Pacific and heading east.   We will say good bye to 50 degree mornings and upper 60 during the days.   Our trip is a reverse of what we did on June 26.   There were 145 miles of mountain roads with great views of steep canyons and vertical hills that kept my attention totally focused on turns, ups and downs.   I was lucky to have a big road tractor behind me that kept other traffic from pushing me.   The truck and I worked well together.   I would pull away on the up hills and he would nearly catch up on the downhills.   We stayed together for over 75 miles.   Our trip began by climbing into and through a dense fog.   Once on top the view was remarkable, just like flying above the clouds.   As Jan can confirm my attitude changed drastically after we cleared this area. I know that we have heard a lot about the prices of fuel in California, th...

  June 28, 2022 The state of California has two of the three types of Redwoods in the world.   There is the Sequoia-Redwood that is found in the area of Yosemite in Southern California and then the Coastal Redwood that is found from just north of San Francisco to the Oregon-California border.     The coastal redwood is the tallest of all.   One in particular reached a height of 381’.   It fell in 1991 and was so large that it was measured on the Richter scale 50 miles away.   I guess that goes along way in answering the age old question (if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a sound).   The trip today was to the “Avenue of the Giants”, south of Eureka, CA.   This is a REAL scenic drive winding through some spectacular trees.   Along this drive there were turnouts, some with trails.   We stopped at one that had a wonderful trail that wound in and out through some of the tallest of all trees.   This is ...

  June 27, 2022 Visiting the Redwood Forest, we were amazed at the size and beauty of the monsters.   We tried to come up with adjectives to describe these trees but awesome and wow were as good as it got for us.   Most of the trees we saw, we weren’t able to see the tops.   It is hard for us to think that some of these trees were taller than a football field.   Sadly, I wasn’t able to show how big these trees are.   The redwood trees are the tallest in the world and their cousin the Sequoia are the largest. We went through the Lady Bird Johnson Memorial Grove early.   We had to climb, on the road, through a heavy fog to get to the Grove.   The Grove was above the fog but as we walked the trail the fog began to climb into the Grove.   Fog and sun combined make for some pretty nice photos.   The fern plants were amazingly large.   Some were taller than me.   I hope that the pictures show the size of the trees and ferns. ...

  June 26 We left Weed, CA for the furthest westerly point on our trip today, Arcata, CA.   In Weed the temperature was to be near 100 today.   When we arrived in Arcata the temperature was 61.   We could see a fog over the ocean, that was moving in slowly.   Our trip today took us to Redding then west on one of the hardest drives I have had to make in an RV.   Not only was the road not straight, it was up and down some major mountains.   As we started out of Redding the surrounding hills were covered with gnarly trees - most of them had been in forest fires.   In fact, most of this drive was in and out of burn areas.   So sad to see all of these forests burned. As we drove through this area, a lot of the time the mountain came down to the roadway and on the other side was a direct drop to in to a beautiful river.   We were lucky not to have too much traffic to contend with, but we did watch behind us and try to not to have too many c...