Buses By The Bridge Road Trip - pt. 1

Whew! We've had an exhausting few weeks. I thought vacations were supposed to be relaxing? Back on the afternoon of Jan. 6th we packed up the bus, hitched up Woodstock, our teardrop cargo trailer and left the Seattle area for a two week road trip in our VW bus.

The eventual destination was to be Lake Havasu City for a very large annual VW bus gathering. But, we did some sightseeing along the way. First stop was just south of Portland. From there we headed south to Grants Pass where we took the scenic route over to Crescent City, California -- right along the coast. Our timing was perfect -- sunset. We decided to push on a little farther and stayed in Eureka. The next day we took the incredibly scenic Avenue of the Giants which parallels Hwy. 101. Since it was fairly early on a Sunday morning in January, we basically had the road to ourselves.





They really were giants. I loved how the road was literally right next to the trees. If you've never seen the redwoods you really must put this on your bucket list.




We stopped at the obligatory Chandelier tree but sadly we were too tall to drive through it. What an impressive tree it is.




From here we took the scenic route around Clear Lake and on to Sacramento to spend the night with the Bearded One's brother. Along the way I spotted this lovely "Christmas Cactus".








The following morning saw us heading east towards Tahoe. The weather was a beautiful 53. Sadly, up until just last week they had not seen any snow and golfing was the hot sport instead of the usual skiing at this time of year. This is about as close to Tahoe as we got. We then took yet another scenic route that is usually closed this time of year.




Yet even at this altitude we didn't see any snow. The creeks were iced over but that's about it. Somewhere on the descent from 8200+ feet we heard a loud pop. Nothing seemed amiss with the bus but we were concerned nonetheless. It wasn't until the next morning that we discovered the source of the noise. When we opened up the cupboard to get out the coffee supplies we discovered the previously unopened bag of potato chips had exploded inside the cupboard. While relating this story sitting around the campfire several days later we found we were not alone in having had this somewhat scary occurrence.




The east side of Mt. Whitney taken from Lone Pine, California.

Next stop -- Death Valley.

LizA.
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