Arrived in Yreka

Is the day over yet? It seemed like the drive lasted forever. The morning started off quiet enough with me being able to jaywalk, not run, across a 5-lane street to grab coffee. We then packed up the car and headed towards the obelisk to get close-up pictures of the bicycle parts. We made it as far as downtown before we started running into barricades – turns out that today was the Annual Luther Burbank Rose Parade and Festival, though we didn’t know it at the time. After being turned around several times, we decided to forego the close-up and headed out of town towards Healdsburg.
We arrived in Healdsburg, found a great parking spot, and then headed to Downtown Bakery for a coffee and donut muffin. This is always a necessary stop on our trip, though my mum now has the recipe and does a bang up job of making them herself. We wandered around the Healdsburg Plaza for a while, waiting for the stores to open at ten, and noticed that one of our favourite stores had moved to Cloverdale (Oh well, next trip). We also stopped at a fabric store but decided against buying anything as the prices were a bit steep.
After Healdsburg, we headed just out of town to the Jimtown Store to grab a picnic lunch. My mum had a roast pepper and fennel salad with a side of olives, and I had a small potato salad. We walked around the grounds, looking at flowers, then back on the road we went.
We drove to Calistoga, passed by Chateau Montelena (which had a line of cars out the driveway), then headed towards Lake Country. My GPS tried routing us down a road that barely looked like a cow path, so we pulled over and reverted to a good old-fashioned paper map to find what highway we wanted. We found the correct road – which turned out to be the road we were already on – and off we went again. Now, I say we were on the right road, but the road was definitely not one that I was too happy driving on. After what seemed like hours of switchbacks and drop-offs (it was only 90 minutes), we arrived on the other side of the mountain range, and located our picnic spot – Clearlake.
We sat by the water in Redbud Park and watched the various species of birds that were around us. I was able to add another bird to my list – a Bicolored Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus gubernator) – a subspecies that is only found in California and Central Mexico. I also saw a Western Grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis), though I had initially thought it was Clark’s Grebe (A. clarkia). On closer inspection of my pictures, albeit blurry pictures, I made the determination it wasn’t a new bird to add my list after all – I added a Western Grebe in Salmon Arm, BC on my cross-Canada trip with my mum in 2010.
After lunch, we headed back out, and this time ran into a bicycle ‘event’ on the highway. For the majority of the drive to Williams (and the I-5) we shared the road with the cyclists in scattered groups. Needless to say I was sick of driving already and there were still four hours left to drive. We finally reached the I-5 and headed north, passing newly planted patty fields where rice is now being grown.
The drive up the I-5 was fairly uneventful, but every rest area between Williams and Weed (180 miles) were closed. When we finally reached the one in Weed, it was raining and we were only a few miles from Yreka so we pushed on to the hotel. We checked in, threw our leftovers in the microwave, and ate in front of the television. Both my mum and I were just done and my mum was snoring before 10 o’clock. I intend to follow suite as soon as I post this and organize a few things for tomorrow.
Enjoy the pictures, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

L

Red Flower

Colourful Flowers

Jimtown Store

Poster in Jimtown Store

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