Homecoming

Lake Shasta

Picking up where we left off in northern California.....

To escape the noise at the Buckhorn Recreation Area, we drove north into Redding and talked to the staff at the ranger station who advised us about camping just north of town at Lake Shasta.  We checked out one of the undeveloped lakeside camping areas then opted for a facility with bathrooms. We pulled into Antlers campground with plenty of time for a relaxing afternoon in the semi-quiet park.  Through the night we could hear the freight trains carrying supplies north to the besieged cities of Portland and Seattle.  I imagined freight cars full of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, rice, and beans.

Beautiful Mt. Shasta in Weed, CA.

Our days of sun and warmth were coming to an end as a storm front was approaching from the south.  We followed the Sacramento River north to Shasta and the lovely town of Weed. Up and over Siskiyou Pass before the expected heavy snowfall later in the day, we dropped into the Rogue River watershed and found a Grocery Outlet store in Medford Oregon where we stocked up on canned goods, dry goods, toilet paper, and wine.  

Siskiyou Pass

With a cold snap expected, we treated ourselves to an Airbnb room which turned out to be just the right place for us at the time.  Normally we don't go for the Airbnb rooms in a house where the owner does not actually live.  Sometimes people buy a house for the sole purpose of Airbnb-ing the individual bedrooms inside.  It's a way to gain equity while maintaining enough income stream to keep everything afloat with some profit on the side.  Anyhow, this house was a new one on the Airbnb site but the host had another property with lots of great reviews.  

Having the house to ourselves, we sanitized the door knobs, bathroom and kitchen surfaces.  Then we unloaded the truck contents into the house and set about sanitizing every item we'd just bought at Grocery Outlet.  Sometime in the night someone (or two) came in and occupied the back room.  We packed up the next morning and left without seeing our fellow tenants.  

Driving north, the storm front brought rain, snow, and hail.  We pushed on through Portland, and made it to Olympia by late afternoon.  We'd been gone about four months total.  The town looked deserted. It seemed as if an epidemic had come to town... and it had!  Being that we were early getting back, our home, the one at 1910 Giles Avenue still had tenants in it for the next two weeks, so we trucked our gear down the ramp of Dock E at the Swantown Marina and thankfully collapsed into our dear boat, Traveler.  Our friends Noreen and Myron had turned on the heaters for us so we had a nice cozy place all ready.  I selected one of the 18 bottles of red wine we'd bought in our provisioning extravaganza and we settled in for a completely different kind of existence, one of social distancing; worried about the future, worried about our friends and family.  

A few days later we couldn't stand the endless hours holed up on the boat, reading the news, and letting the events of the day swallow us whole.  We cast off the lines and motored north out of Budd Bay, rounding the point at Boston Harbor in the bright sunshine.  Off the east shore of Harstine Island we had dolphins playing off our bow wake, a sea lion raised it's huge head up out of the water, (at first we thought it was a whale!) and Bufflehead ducks diving the crisp green waters around us.  Today we are at the Jarrell Cove state park dock.  

It's been fun restarting our blog for this winter trip.  It's given me some focus and provided an outlet for occasional frustrations.  We've come off this adventure knowing better how we'd like our future winters to unfold.  But gosh, now that we have that figured out, here is this whole other thing right smack dab in our face.  If it ain't one thing, it's another.  Thanks for listening.