Up the Sacramento Valley to Redding

Wednesday March 28^th

It wasn’t raining this morning but it wasn’t much fun getting the trailer ready to travel with puddles everywhere that I had to walk. This place definitely needs some rock spread around to raise the surface level above the water level. But in all fairness this is probably the wettest time of year for this area. The forecast for today was 80% rain but we lucked out and got rolling about 1100 without seeing a drop of rain. And the weather got better the farther N we went. We are heading for Redding, CA tonight, only about 170 miles away. We traveled N on I-5 which follows the Sacramento River Valley. I thought it was the California Central Valley, but apparently N of Sacramento it is called the Sacramento Valley since the River flows down the valley to Sacramento and then flows west, eventually into the Pacific. I didn’t realize that the Sacramento was such a major river. Its flow is second only to the Columbia on the W coast of the US. It drains a major portion of N California and a small part of S Oregon.

Yesterday when the Goodyear folks fixed my tire they did me the ‘favor’ of correcting my tire pressure to 35 lb., which is the recommended pressure for these tires. I could tell the difference as soon as we were on the interstate; lots more sway and wiggle than when I have them inflated to 40 lbs.. So the first truck stop we came to we stopped to add some air. As luck would have it the air compressor available to the public was out of order. There were more in the truck area, but that was so busy I didn’t want to go over there. So we went up the road to the next rest stop and I got out my 12V air compressor and pumped up the rear Suburban tires to 40 lb. That took some of the wiggle out and also prevents the tires from heating up, since they flex less with more air in them.

We stopped for lunch in Corning, CA which is a center of the olive industry in N California. We first stopped at a produce stand and bought some nuts, oranges and grapefruit. The lady at the stand said the grapefruit came from Idaho. So I said “Is that a town in California?” She said no, they really come from somewhere near Boise where they are raised in huge indoor fabric buildings. That was a stretch for my brain; I can’t imagine why grapefruit would be so valuable as a crop that you would grow them in a climate where you have to grow them inside. Next stop was a place called the ‘Olive Pit;’ It was mostly a store with lots of different kinds of stuffed olives, olive oil, and a lot of other kind of local bottled or canned produce. There was even a brand of jellies from the Kozloski farms; so they must have at least one Polack in California!

It was only about 50 miles from Corning to Redding and we got here about 4:30. While setting up I met our neighbor who is from Whidbey Island, WA and his dog (a standard poodle) Max. I said that that was the third standard poodle I had met in the last three weeks that was named Max. As it turns out this Max knew the last Max that we had met in Phoenix at the Desert’s Edge RV Park – what are the chances of that? I think I better buy one of those $500 million lottery tickets – my improbability meter is pegged and I better make the most of it!