Two from the Road

Weedyreka

Drove back from Eugene last night and this morning. Started at 5 p.m. or so, stopped at the cheap gas station (a 76 station just south of town that is always at least a nickel or a dime a gallon cheaper than what you find near the university), then got on Interstate 5 southbound. The Sunday of Memorial Day weekend: I recommend it for your long highway trips. Very few people were on the road, and by the time we started the climb up toward the last Oregon summit on I-5, in the last hour before the sun set, it was like driving in the middle of the night.

Most of the way through Oregon we drove through sunlit showers, and for a while saw a rainbow around every bend in the road. The shot above is from the stretch between Yreka and Weed, in far northern California: Rain refracted in the last light of the day, a semi-rainbow. The peak near the center is Black Butte, a small volcanic peak just to the west of Mount Shasta. The shot below: from the climb up the northern side of Canyon Creek Summit, a little more than halfway between Eugene and the California line.

I5Rainbow

I-5 Regular

Thom and I drove up to Eugene from Berkeley on Sunday (with his dorm-mate Sam, who rode up with us after getting stranded in the San Francisco airport on his way back to school from New York. A 500-mile trip, and a lot of the Oregon stretch that had been alien territory is becoming familiar: the four low summits between Grants Pass and Canyonville; the Seven Feathers Casino (free and not-too-awful coffee at the tribe-owned gas station and mini-mart), the two sharp mountainside turns at Myrtle Creek (they get your attention because the I-5 speed limit drops to 50 mph there). I’m starting to have a Eugene-trip routine: We drop Thom’s stuff off at his dorm, go to dinner, then I head back south. As when I made this trip in November, I got as far as Yreka (home of my favorite non-existent bakery) before my brain said, “Enough.” I got a room around midnight in the Best Western at the bottom of central Yreka exit ramp. A sign that I’m becoming an I-5 regular: The clerk recognized me.

Off again now to return to Berkeley. Stay tuned for pictures of 24-hour drive-thru coffee and the 70 mph dog.