2For66

April 24, 2015

In order to travel on Route 66, one must first travel to Route 66. That is a journey in itself if you are starting from Portland, Oregon. We have a two-day 1,000 mile trip to intersect the Mother Road in Victorville, California.

We reprised our February/March road trip by traveling about 580 miles in just under 10 hours to get to Sacramento. After four or five hours we hit the Oregon/California border up in the Siskiyou mountains.

A few miles past the summit we hit the California Agricultural Inspection Station;I remember back in the day traveling down from College we had to eat our oranges before we could enter the state. Today they just waved us through; we had apples, which are okay, but no oranges.

A few miles after that we finally got our “Welcome to California” sign.

We stopped at a rest stop in California – across the street from majestic Mt. Shasta – for our lunch of almond butter and jam sandwiches and our apples. We had yogurt too but saved that for an afternoon snack.

California is in the midst of a major drought so it was nice to have the clouds and a bit of rain even if it slowed us down a bit. We heard on the news that a medium-sized storm is coming into northern California that might dump a bit of snow up in the Sierra. That would be great. No worries for us: we got down from the mountains and have nothing but a long drive through the San Joaquin Valley and Mojave Desert tomorrow. We may get some rain but no snow (fingers crossed)

After arriving at our hotel in Sacramento we walked into Old Town on the river walk and had dinner at Fat City Bar and Café. It was nice; not great but nice. We wandered around the shops – which were closed on our February morning visit. The forecasted rain was starting. As we say up there: “we aren’t made of sugar so we won’t melt in a little rain.”