Turn, Curve, Wind, Turn, Curve, Curve!!!!!!!

Oh, my, oh, my. What a trip. I am starting with Friday as we left Redding, California and headed to Point Arena, California. Now most of you know that the van has a GPS and we have finally named our guide. We are going to call her Ms. Jezebel. We thought about “Make a U-turn” since she is always telling us that but decided against it. We needed to drive south and west because Point Arena is on the coast and we had to go through some mountains to do that. Ms. Jezebel told us that we would be there around 4. That was of course before we stopped for lunch. She does not take into account any stops and readjusts her time when we start back up from the stop.

We ate lunch at Williams which is a small town on I-5 and we think must be known only for the restaurant there called Granzella’s. It was delicious, awesome, busy and very enjoyable. It was in an area that had many olive groves. When we left there we had about 140 miles to go and Ms. Jezebel said it would take 4 hours. We had a beautiful drive west toward the coast and then up the east side of Clear Lake. We drove right by the Worldmark timeshare on Clear Lake. We continued northwest until we intersected with US101 and turned south on it. We only had to go 10 miles (just south of Ukiah) until we turned west on CA253.

Now when you look at a map I’m sure that you know the roads are different depending upon the width and color. CA253 is a fairly thin “black” line (it could be gray). The deal was Ms. Jezebel said we had about 60 miles to go and it would take us almost 3 hours. So Bob said something was definitely incorrect and the time would readjust. Guess what! The arrival time didn’t change. It took us a little longer than an hour to go to Boonville. Then the sign said End 253. That was interesting and now I understood why Ms. Jezebel told us to go on Mountain View Road and that is exactly what we did. It took us almost 1 ½ hours to go 26 miles and our arrival time was right on what she told us.

Don’t get me wrong, it was an interesting drive but there was hardly ever more than 20 yards straight. I am thankful that it was clear, sunny and without rain. We made it safely and before dark. Now I’ll tell a little about last week.

We stayed 6 nights in a cabin outside of Redding, California. It was a modified B&B and had a kitchen which was great. We saw wild turkey, deer (right next to the van), squirrels with big bushy gray tails, jack rabbits (the ones with huge ears), quail and lots of different birds.

We didn’t get to see the bear which had been there the night before we arrived. The weather was also much warmer there. The pine trees all over the area are Valley Pine and they have huge cones.

We went to two different National Parks. At Whiskeytown we hiked a small distance on two different trails, one of them leading to some waterfalls.

We drove to Lassen Volcanic National Park and drove through from the north to the south. Many times we have only seen a mountain peak from one side. We got to see the Lassen Peak from the east and the west.

We got to see a controlled burn

and learn about the volcanic eruption that took place in 1914 and 1915. We went from about 1,000 feet to over 8,500 feet. The peak is taller but we didn’t hike to the peak.

I did a little work on some Christmas gifts; we did cross-stitch and read some. It was a comfortable week.