Ashland to Corning, CA

Sept 12^th

Ahhhh, it’s nice to be on the road with no schedule. Since we only planned to do a short drive today, we had a leisurely morning eventually getting packed up and ready to go about 9:00 AM. We pulled out of our site and got to the entrance where another camper was in the exit lane trying to dump his tanks. Since we wanted to get propane in the main tank, we had to wait for him to finish. 

And this was on the down hill side...

Eventually we were able to pull up and fill up then pulled out of the campground onto OR-66 headed back toward Ashland so we could pick up I-5 south. We got on the freeway about 9:45 and continued to wind our way through the mountains of southern Oregon. Surprisingly the elevations get up to 4,000 feet but seventeen miles after leaving camp we reached the California border. 

Getting ready to start our descent to the Mt Shasta Plateau

Mountain driving is even more intense than driving on the flats – the road twists and turns going up and down to follow the valleys through the hills. Trying to manage our speed and spare our brakes I made good use of our “Jake Brake” keeping our downhill speeds between 45 and 55 and between 40 and 50 on the uphills, enough to play leapfrog with the semi’s, passing them going up, being passed going down. 

Dropping down into the Mount Shasta plateau, the haze was so heavy that Mt Shasta was barely visible until we were within five miles of it. It was still beautiful when we were next to it, but there wasn’t much snow on its flanks. Continuing through Weed, Mt Shasta and Dunsmuir we continued our slow descent down to the flats and the city of Redding. 

Set up in Heritage RV Park

Once down out of the mountains we made good time to Red Bluff only to go past our exit due to heavy traffic in one of the construction areas. No matter, Tina grabbed the Trailer Life Directory and looked for a place in the next city, Corning. Bingo, Heritage RV Park looked like our next stop. We pulled in about 1:00 pm and got a pull through site, set up (no problems with slides this time) and had lunch. 

We took the dogs for several walks around the park to enjoy the sunshine and 90 degree temperatures making sure they had plenty of water. The rest of the afternoon we relaxed, read and watched the US Open. Later we decided to walk to a small Mexican restaurant for dinner and stop at Safeway on the way back. Dinner was surprisingly good for a mall restaurant. We got done with our shopping and headed back to the coach about 7:30 pm. 

The rest of the evening we worked on trip planning, the blog and photos, finally calling it quits around 10:30 after a final dog walk. 

Miles traveled today, 178. Total for the trip so far, 741 miles. 

To see all our photos, go to: 

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdolanski