On to Oregon

Mount Shasta - N California

We left Nicolaus, CA about 9:15 AM Saturday and headed north on 99.  We decide to go across 20 to I-5 rather than spending time going through all the towns on 99.  We continued to see lots of rice fields as it was very flat for hours.  We were able to see Mount Shasta, very large and snow capped at 14k feet, for over a hundred miles as we headed straight toward it.  To my surprise, we didn't start getting into any climbs until we were north of Redding and very close to Shasta.  Once we did though it was up and down until around Umpqua, Oregon.  The other surprising thing to me was that though there were climbs, we rarely got over 3k elevation. We would go from around 600 some feet to maybe 2000-2500 feet and then back down.  There was only one pass that hit 4k.  I thought there would be longer climbs and higher elevations.  All that being said, there was plenty of up and down for less than ideal fuel economy.  It was good to smell the pine forests as we got to the woodlands in the hills.

Landscape - Southwest Oregon

We stayed the night at Wal-Mart (parking lot, not in the store) in Grants Pass, OR.  We thought we would rest up before tackling what were supposed to be the tough climbs.  As mentioned above, the climbs didn't amount to much compared to driving from Phoenix to Flagstaff or Phoenix to Payson.

As we got to the flat lands in Oregon we were excited to find ourselves driving through the Grass Seed Capital of the world.  I'm glad they had the sign so we didn't wonder why so much land was just allowed to be over grown with grass.  You can tell it is an "organized" grass rather than just purely wild.  My itchy eyes and sneezing don't let me forget we are in the grass wonderland. 

Our RV Park is just northeast of Salem on the edge of Silverton.  This area has blueberries and other fruit (in addition to the grass) for crops.  Silverton is a neat little old town that sits on the 45th Parallel.  We'll stop and take a walk around some time this week now that our quick drive through looked interesting.