It's getting hot. The wind is starting to blow every day. The flies are in a frenzy. It's time to go home.
We've dealt with the flies the whole time, but they were getting worse! I imagine the hot weather brought them on. So we decided it was time to leave. We can shelter at home and have really good WiFi, lots of water, and unlimited flushes.
We got out of our camping spot early, but got delayed again at the dump station. So it was close to 11:30 before we got on the road for good. It was windy, but otherwise, the drive went well. We stopped in Barstow and stayed the night on some BLM land that hadn't been closed due to Covid-19.
Our goal for the next day was Stockton, CA. We talked to someone at a campground up there and he said he'd let us stay for the night since we were trying to get home. The day went relatively smoothly until about 1:30. We had just finished eating at a rest stop and were back on I-5 headed North. Suddenly, we heard a siren behind us and it turned out the siren was meant for us! The patrolman told us that the driver's-side rear wheel on the trailer was canted and looked unsafe. He wanted us to take the next exit and have a look for ourselves. It would also be a good idea to get to a shop as soon as possible.
Question: we are in the middle of nowhere, California. Where should we go? "That's a problem," said he. "Your best bet is Fresno, which is East of here."
We took the next exit, looked things over, and noticed a slight bow in the rear axle and a little unevenness in the tire wear. After making some calls, a tire shop in Fresno agreed to see us. We were only about 50 miles away, so we went for it. After misleading directions from our GPS, we finally found the tire shop.
Jeff took a look at it, jacked the trailer up, dropped it back down, and said, "Yes, the axle is a little bowed and yes, your tire is slightly worn. But it's Friday afternoon, and if you need a part, you'll have to wait until Monday. If it were me, I'd drive it home and deal with it up there. The CHP are just looking for out-of-state plates, anyway. I never drive I-5." No offense to anyone who loves Fresno, but the prospect of spending the weekend there was not even a little enticing. So we took his advice and jumped on the 99 and headed to Stockton.
The Riverpoint Landing is a lovely little campground on the San Joaquin River. To our surprise the river is a shipping channel! As we were finishing with the trailer set-up, this freighter went by on his way to the Bay. It was pretty impressive to have something that large floating by so close. Kind of a nice end to a very stressful afternoon.
The next morning, H said he wanted to get the tire changed out for the spare just to be safe. We found an America's Tire fairly close by. We got there at 8:30 and by 9:30 they were done. The people there were great, and they didn't charge a thing for the tire change. We made a quick stop at Walmart and then were back on I-5 by 10:30. Other than trucks, there was almost no traffic on the freeway, so we made good progress. Things got a little exciting when we hit heavy snow in Weed as we were going through the Siskyou Mountains. We managed to get through before it started sticking to the highway. We didn't want to have to chain up.
Our goal for the night was the Seven Feathers Casino which is just south of Roseburg. We reached it by 6:00. Then we looked at each other. We were less than 4 hours away from Beaverton. Should we go for it? YES!!! While H was gassing up the truck, I ran back into the trailer and grabbed anything we could eat that wouldn't need cooking and threw it into a bag.
So after a dinner on the road of crackers, cold cuts, and peanut butter, and a dessert of graham crackers and chocolate frosting, we arrived home at 9:38 PM--two very tired, but very happy campers!
I'll post again with the trip stats, so stay tuned. I've posted a few of H's photos that didn't make the cut into a formal blog. You can check them out here.
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