Early Morning Big Sky

We said our farewells to Ann and Harold and took our leave from Corvallis yesterday. Various attempts at getting Ozzie to lie down left us both frustrated and unsuccessful, so we stopped fighting it. We went back to the Peerless Restaurant for dinner, explaining to the waiter that having found a shady place to park, we had left our dog in the car. He brought us our salads and burgers and crabcakes, and, some  plenty of wine, in short order, and Ozzie seemed perfectly happy to lie down in the car as long as it wasn't moving....

There's nothing to do in a motel on the outskirts of town in the morning, so we had had our Noble Coffee and hit the road again by 7:30. The 135 mile stretch of Interstate 5 between Ashland and Redding is definitely the most interesting of the trip, traveling from Ashland's fertile pastureland, over the Siskiyou Summit, through the high desert country where I took today's moving shot through the windshield, and passing Mt Shasta (extra) and the Shasta Dam, covered respectively in snow and water thanks to the winter's record rains.

After Shasta Lake it is literally all downhill...Redding is where the mountains peter out and meet the hot, flat, farmland of the Central Valley. There are Olive and Almond orchards and stores which sell olive oil and other olive products, and produce stands selling mostly local produce, but also items that aren't in season and sometimes aren't even produce...unless you count crisps and gummy bears....

We elected to drive over the mountain roads to Clear Lake (which isn't) and the hills between Calistoga and Santa Rosa in order to check out the damage done by last summer's firestorms around Clear Lake and Middleton. The still standing burned trees (second extra) are a more harsh reminder of the devastation than the burned structures which are slowly being rebuilt.

By the time we got home Ozzie had still refused to lie down, and began limping again almost as soon as he jumped out of the car. Tomorrow we will have to take him to the vet and see about ways of helping him get out of the car. For the moment he and OilMan are asleep on our bed....