Day 15 :: 4 February 2007 :: Redding to Philomath
Going thru the Siskiyou Mountains was really neat. I'm guessing that when I'd first made my trip via Greyhound out to Portland from San Antonio, we went thru these mountains [we took the 5 from LA to Portland], but I've no idea as I slept thru it all. Anyway, it was really nice to be able to actually look at these mountains that I've heard so much about. And Shasta? Wow! I'm not sure which was more impressive: the mountain or the lake. The fun thing about seeing Mt. Shasta is that we got to see the flight trails that Hestaby and Sky left for us [Jenn's gamer buddies will get this reference]. The roads were long, fast, and windy; gum certainly was a good thing for popping my ears for equilibrium. And these roads were so not like the 101 or the 1. We made some crazy good time, and there were no close calls with any vehicles either. Yay!
Seeing the summit sign [showing the summit at 4310 feet] was really neat. It also reminded us that we hadn't seen any kind of "bye from CA" or "hi from OR" signs at the state lines. How weird is that? We even saw a golden eagle and many hawks flying around; thankfully, there were no dead raptors. And then there were the metal animals we saw: a cow that was utterly creepy, and a dragon that totally rocked!
We drove thru Medford. And that's about all I have to say there. Not much to comment on. *shrugs*
It took us about three hours to get from Redding to Grants Pass, even with a potty stop! I'd say that's pretty damned good time. Unfortunately, because it was a Sunday, we didn't get to go to the Fire Mountain Gems location. That sucked, but was probably best for the budget, you know?
From there, we made some damned good time up to Philomath, too. I think it was just the whole need to get home, to be totally honest. 15 days away from home, and all we wanted was to be home again. It happened pretty much right after we'd left V. Sattui the day before. That had been our last "real" stop/touristy spot.
Anyway, once we hit Philomath, we went out to see Lorre and Will. And we finally got the matching bookcase to the one I've had for 9 years now. Lorre's dad made the set back around the time Lorre was born, if memory serves correctly. All the boards are the originals, and made of good, hard fir. He was commenting that if the boards had to be replaced now, it'd be a minimum of $300-$400 just for the larger of the two bookcases, so probably a good $500 minimum to replace them all with the fir again. I mean, on the big bookcase, there are 3 boards that are 8' x 12" x 1", plus the 6 shorter boards. And did I mention the stell frames? Heavy, built-to-last snit here.
So Jenn basically completely repacked the Tribeca to allow for the bookcase pieces, while I played with the dogs and Will. Then we headed into town to stay at the Galaxie motel again, and went out for pizza with Lorre and Will. When they headed home, we headed back to the motel to pass out.