I Didn't Know the Romans Reached Northern California

Experience is showing that hops of between 150 and 175 miles are ideal. Unfortunately, our round trip has included three hops of 250+ miles. Well, you live and learn. We would have benefited from an overnight between Humboldt and Ashland. The leg we did on Saturday wasn’t quite so bad though. We came out of Crater Lake on highway 62, then transferred to highway 97 which proved to be very straight – I mean very, very straight – through open landscape with background mountains. No stopping points either, so the journey was fast. After a short stretch of I-5, we moved on to highway 89, which also proved to be quite straight, and a generally easy drive. To our annoyance, we got stuck behind a big truck (and it’s mostly a single lane road), but we survived.

As the road passed through Hat Creek Valley, it became obvious that there had been some big wildfires in the area. We saw many acres of blackened forest (and there were still some intrepid campers dotted among them, though they had clearly arrived later than the fire….).

Wildfire

Just noticed that some of our route is potentially affected by wildfires. Humboldt Redwoods State Park seems to be fire free at the moment, as is the Bothe-Napa SP near Calistoga; but the Lassen Volcanic National Park has a couple of small fires (see report at http://www.nps.gov/lavo/parkmgmt/current-fire-acitivity.htm). There are much bigger ones in the nearby Lassen National Forest Area which could potentially impact driving conditions.