We left early this morning to head north through California to Oregon. Kind of neat - we hadn't been north of Reno for a while and we were amazed at how much water was in the "dry" lake beds. Probably won't last long, but it's nice to see water on what are usually alkali flats. As we climbed out of Susanville, we had a beautiful view of the valley with snow-covered mountains in the distance.
You normally think of California as being crowded and very metropolitan; however, going north you are traversing high desert and wide open spaces. Even saw some cowboys on horseback rounding up cattle. Lots of wildlife, deer, buzzards, ground squirrels and hawks. One hawk had lunch in his talons and was flying back to the nest - good for the baby hawks, not so much for the rodent. We have had so much rain this year, everything is green. Some of the hills look like they are covered with green velvet. Going north, Mt Shasta appears on the horizon - snow-covered and majestic. Even though it's miles away, it's still impressive.
The road north to Tule Lake, CA is almost straight as an arrow and goes through mostly ranch land and forest service land. Tule Lake is the home of the Honkers (guess that's better than the Muckers) because of the geese which make their annual migration through this area. It was also one of the sites where they moved people of Japanese descent at the start of WWII. The area is now euphemistically called a World War II Relocation Site - guess that's more politically correct than concentration camps, which is what they essentially were. Interesting history behind the relocation - removed Japanese people from the west coast, but also provided cheap labor for the agricultural interests in northern Oregon.
Saw a sign on Lost River - how lost can it be if they have a sign identifying it - just saying. Going further north through Klamath Falls, we passed along Klamath Lake which is almost twenty miles long. Beautiful scenes of the mountains, including Crater Lake and Mount McLoughlin. As we passed further north, we caught sight of Mt Jefferson (10K) and Mt Hood (11K). We had originally planned on staying in Redmond, OR and playing golf, but decided to continue on and make Wednesday's trip a lot shorter. The main reason for our trip was to visit relatives in the Seattle area and it didn't make much sense to cut that time short. Dropped down in the Deschutes River gorge and then back up past Mt Hood - no skiing there this late in the year.
Ended up in Sandy, OR (town of about 9K people). Should be an easy drive tomorrow across the Columbia River, through Vancouver, WA and on up to Seattle. We'll pick Marjorie up, go to lunch and then visit with Edward.
We'll keep you posted.
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