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Jackson is a wealthy town. Very. We cruise around and gas up. We’re headed for Boise tonight not knowing that it’s Gay Pride today. It’s about three hundred miles across Idaho. It’s our first interstate ride in a long time. We’re doing 75mph and we’re being passed by Cummings Turbo-Diesel Dually Dodges with cab-over campers and 6-horse trailers doing 90mph!. Yes. I’m impressed. By dinner time we’ve circled the capital downtown and find ourselves having pizza at one of the local gay/lesbian bars. Big night tonight celebrating so we visit with the owner and the locals in some of the other bars in town as well. It’s all very festive. We eventually find a place to park on a back street which turns out to be the entrance to a city park. No sweat. Tomorrow is Sunday and we’re headed for Oregon and Northeast California. It’s a long drive today across the north end of the desert that stretches all the way into Mexico nine hundred miles to the south. The pictures will tell you this story as well as the words. This is God’s country. Maybe you could call it highlands actually. We stop again and again to take pictures of wildflowers and vista’s. There are lava flows and lakes big enough to border two states. No people to speak of either - maybe two per square mile on average. There are farms and ranches running right down to the lake shore. No resorts. No hotels. No marinas. Just farm animals and wildlife. In the afternoon we enter California and head southwest towards Redding and Lake Shasta. The geography changes again as we climb the eastern Sierra’s. The weather is thick. It starts to drizzle by the time we reach I-5 and Mr. Shasta. It’s 6pm and the fog is covering the mountain. Forget it. So down the mountain we go across the lake which is also shrouded in fog - but beautifully so. We’ll go on the Whiskytown and camp for tonight - or so we think at this point. Boise to Redding is a very long, but very scenic drive. A little more time and we would probably have detoured to Klamath Falls - but that’ll happen whenever we decide to go to Seattle. It was a good day for conversation too.. kind of winding down a bit in preparation for our re-entry. But it ain’t over yet. We don’t make our target. Just as rodt comes down the ramp for gas there’s a shriek and squeal up front. He shuts it down and coasts to the gas pumps and pops the hood. I open it up; boi starts the engine and I shout, "Shut it down!" Our ‘new’ Detroit alternator has taken a dump. It’s ceased. And it’s Sunday night. No choice but to push the van under a tree and sleep in the ARCO station tonight. It’s OK. The rain stops by morning and I’m up taking the alternator off. Boi gets on the phone and finds a parts house. We’ll return this one when we get home. I figure out a way to drive the van without the belts on. At the parts house we fix the problem in the parking lot. But then I find another and another problem. The steering dampener is broken. The poser steering is leaking and so is the radiator. Stop-leak fixes these and I install a new dampener - the steering wheel is upside down but I can correct that when we get home. It’s a cosmetic thang. We figure it this way: Spirit stopped the alternator to get us to check the steering. We’re truly blessed! So after noon we’re away southeast to Lake Almanor. Our last side trip to before heading home. Mr. Lassen is closed due to snow so we head around to Susanville on the cris-crossing our way East over the mountains again. The alpine lakes we pass by are so remote they don’t even have names. Gorgeous lodge-pole and cedar forests - and no people. Susanville is a neat place up Rt’ 395 about a hundred miles above Reno. Population is about 10,000 with all the corporate chain stores including Wal-Mart, Target and such. It’s just before 6pm on Monday and I stop in a tire shop to get the right front wheel checked. Then we see it: The actual end of the rainbow right there on the slopes. Excitement builds - we like it here. Hope the pictures come out OK. Twenty more miles to our destination: Lake Almanor which is much higher up into the mountains. It’s a big lake, 5,000 feet up - about forty miles around he shoreline. Kind of like Lake Tahoe fifty years ago. There’s private property on the waterfront and that’s why we’re here - to see if something finds us. Prices are actually affordable. We want to camp here before dark and there’s a beautiful spot on the north shore our on a small peninsula with a full view of Mr. Lassen to the west. Finally, here we are - on the lake shore together. It feels like the ‘home’ we’ve been looking for. This time we build a fire and grill steaks! The moon lights up across the lake. This is fantastic and we’re already dreaming of living here. No problem waking up the next morning. The nice warm sun does this. The park showers are brand new. Everything’s perfect. Oh, forgot to tell you: Last night n the way here from Susanville, we stopped off at a little village called Westwood. We were looking for access to another lake. Didn’t find it, but what we did find is a cut-off dodge pick-up truck made into a trailer sitting in a vacant lot. It’s green, like our Dodge Van. And there’s a cord of wood in it. (A Cord is eight feet, by eight feet, by four feet - about.. It’s all for sale. So I call the guy from the camp about 10pm. We make a deal - wood and all. So now what are we going to do with all this wood. Take it home and sell it of course. But while I’m in the camp store in the morning I ask how much a cord of wood costs up here. Hummmmmmm… I tell my story. The camp offers to buy the wood. Deal. So we go in the morning, hook up the trailer, wire up the lights, deliver the wood, collect the cash and boom - we’ve got our trailer empty to cruise off the mountain with. Cool. As I always do everywhere, I collect all the local throw-away papers to read. This turns out to be an interesting habit - and sometimes very lucrative - which I’ll tell you about later on. Our trip ‘down the hill’ into Oroville is a beautiful trail along the Feather River banks. At Marysville we turn east for an encore ride to Sacramento. I want to see where rodtney grew-up at Deal Air Force Base. And he’s telling me that Nevada City is becoming a gay resort area. It’s pure gold rush country - mostly restored in the foothills. We end up in Auburn on Hwy 80 on it’s way to Tahoe. But we cross the freeway instead and ride down past our last curiosity: Folsom Lake. But it’s State controlled. No place to live. Just after dark we arrive at rodtney’s parent’s home in Sacramento. Back where we started from twenty-four days ago. "Spartan Sparticus" at the Russian River, California.
Life Continues at Home:
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