Hello! We’re in California! It’s been such a whirlwind since we got here that I haven’t been able to make it over to this space until now. Wow, I’m still catching my breath a bit. We hit the road last Tuesday and decided to break up the drive down to California into two days. We were so, so glad we did that. We made it down to southern Oregon, to my dad and stepmom’s, for the first night. (And yes, we picked up some delicious ferments at Whistling Duck!) Bracken was (very!) glad to stretch his legs and run around the farm. My stepmom had a delicious dinner made for us, despite the fact that they had just returned from their own travels the night before and were still settling back in. We were grateful for the visit and the good food, even though our time was short.

The next morning there was snow! We got on the road and some of the driving was a bit hairy, with snow and ice. We went ahead and got studded tires on our car a while back and that morning we were counting our lucky stars that we had decided to do that. We were sure grateful for them that morning! Once we made it over the pass in Ashland, we were relieved. We headed down I-5 and were soon in California. The mountains were beautiful and we admired Mt. Shasta, which I had only seen from Ashland before. The drive ended up taking longer than we expected, as drives tend to do with stops for gas and bathroom breaks. Plus, we came a long way! Luckily, we didn’t have any issues with flooding on our route, but we did see flooding throughout the drive.

Did I mention our car was packed to the max? We seriously looked like the Beverly Hillbillies driving down the road, with a whole car full of stuff and more stuff attached to the roof rack to boot. (We looked at rooftop carriers in preparation for our trip, but we didn’t end up buying one and were glad for it because we had long display pieces to attach to the roof that we wouldn’t have been able to fit with a carrier there.) We had limited space to pack clothes, so when we left Jeff joked that we should all put on as many pairs of underwear and socks as we could wear. Ha! We packed few clothes, knowing we could do laundry when we were there, so we didn’t have to go along with Jeff’s original plan.

We forgot to bring our atlas, so we picked up a map of California on the way. Even though I was born in California, I haven’t seen very much of the state. We moved away when I was a baby and later the trips we took were to a few specific areas, and California is a big state with a lot to see. I enjoyed seeing new places as we drove down the state. And the show? More on that soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to pop by and say hello. Hello!