Day 18, 2022 - The Path Home

June 17th

The Path Behind

It’s Friday. The Friday of a Father’s Day weekend. Also the Friday of the new “Juneteenth” federal holiday weekend. I’m all in favor of more holidays. Considering we’re an ”advanced” country, it seems we’re so backwards in so many ways. Take for instance our healthcare situation. Backwards. We’re definitely not a leader there. Adding another holiday is a step in the right direction but I’ll stop there. This could get really messy if I went on.

Pussy Ears

We both feel hard asleep really early last night and slept through. Still, we were both a bit sluggish but also ready to head home. The plan was to try and get underway by 0900 and it was about 1000 when we were pulling out. I’ll say it again, the Etna Valley area was quite beautiful and folks were really friendly. Not a bad place to live if you want to reside in Northern California. Even the housing prices were reasonable, relative to the Seattle area. The fuel prices were, on average, $1.50 more per gallon than in Oregon and Washington. If you’re towing, as we were with the travel trailer, the maximum speed limit is 55MPH. This suited me fine as we really weren’t in a rush and would help with my fuel use. When I’m towing the fuel usage on the truck is pretty bad. When traveling down the highway I’m constantly looking at other rigs, campers, teardrop trailers, Sprinter-type vans, smaller travel trailers and considering what else I might be satisfied with where I could also lower my carbon footprint. And fuel expense. Heck, Peggy even chimes in a bit here from time to time and what she thinks would be cool. The problem is that once you get rid of the bathroom, shower, half the galley, heat, refrigeration, fresh water, and protection against the elements, you may as well just have a tent. And tents can get really wet and sometimes even blow away. No more carbon footprint. But I’ll stop there. This could get really messy if I went on.

The drive home was sometimes slow with the weekend traffic but nothing really bad. We had several fuel stops, rest area stops, and potty breaks for Beau. The drive gave us time to talk about possible future trips and some reflexion on doing the parts of Oregon (Crater Lake to Bridge of the Gods) that Runningbird wants to finish up. We would maybe target late July or August. The problem is that they had such late snow this year that the trail may still be quite challenging even then. It’s been such a weird past couple of years for weather. Probably not going to get any better anytime soon.

Pasque Flower

We pulled onto our street close to 9PM. Peggy took management of Beau while I took a while to maneuver our trailer into our tiny driveway. It took several adjustments but I finally hit the sweet spot and got it put down. I dropped the gear and got it plugged in and secured. It was nice to be home. Tomorrow we’ll deal with laundry, emptying the refrigerator, doing laundry, and getting stuff put away. There is a graduation party to attend, and catching up on gardening. If it ever decides to stop raining. While coming home is great, there’s something really nice about wandering the backroads and small towns of the western states. I’ll always have the fond memories of the highway 395 corridor of California near Bishop, Lone Pine, and Mammoth Lakes from 2019. For now, we’ll see what the next couple months bring. Ciao!