Day 3 - February 9th, 2025
4:30 a.m. Temperature -4 C
Otis is crying, he needs to go pee. We try to get him to go back to sleep but nothing works. There’s no alternative but to get up and go out in the cold for him to go potty. Oh, and now Freya also wants to join in with the fun! As we are both now wide awake (the early night helped), we decide to get up, get dressed and hit the road super early whilst there was hardly any traffic. We had another great night’s sleep, the rest areas are awesome. There are signs saying no overnight parking and the rules state that you are allowed a maximum of an 8 hour stop but iOverlander has lots of write ups of people sleeping at them and not being bothered and our experience backs that up. There were people sleeping in RVs, vans and cars as well as the truckers in their parking area. All of the rest stops have toilets and pet areas and some have vending machines and potable water taps.
Anyway, I took the dogs out in the snow and Emma made coffee and then we set off at around 5:30 a.m.
We seemed to be the only vehicle on the road except for a few semi trucks and so we slowly made our way along, climbing up in elevation, past Mount Ashland and crossed into California. The agriculture checkpoint was closed (maybe too early, maybe it’s not open on a Sunday) so we didn’t have to stop and drove into Northern California still in the dark. Everything was fine for the first 15 minutes or so and then suddenly there were traffic signs with flashing winter weather warnings and the fog descended upon us, reducing visibility to just a few meters. Also, all the while we were climbing, the temperature was also dropping rapidly. We went from about -4 C at the rest stop where we started and fell to -10.5 C when the fog descended. It was pretty nervewracking driving the big, heavy van up the windy mountain roads in the thick fog. The headlights of an occasional semi coming up behind us quickly then thundering past at speeds that we didn’t feel comfortable travelling at. We continued to make our way slowly to the peak where we came across about 10 to 15 semi trucks on both sides of the highway just parked up with engines running and lights on. We wondered why they were there and soon realised that they didn’t want to go down the steep windy roads in the freezing fog. We however carried on, at an even slower pace, thankful for the GPS so at least we knew when the bends were approaching. We eventually made it out of the fog and we stopped again at another rest area to have a second cup of coffee and the dogs got another potty break. There was heavier snow at this rest stop and although they had ploughed most of the parking lot, the sidewalks and pet areas were not which made for an interesting walk for myself and the dogs. As we set off again through the Klamath National Forest, the sun was finally rising giving us amazing views of the snow covered trees and the mountains. The blue sky that appeared out of the sunrise framed the scene perfectly and the whole Mount Shasta area looked awesome, we would love to return and explore the area further in the future.
We stopped twice more on our way through Northern California, at the first rest stop for a short break and at the second rest stop for about 2 hours to catch up on some emails and to get over our early morning start. As we set off again, the temperature had risen to +14.5 C (an increase of 25 C since this morning.) We were definitely heading in the right direction!
Traffic was fine until we passed Sacramento. Here, all hell broke loose! A lot of people you meet in Canada will tell you that Vancouver drivers are the worst and that Vancouver has terrible traffic. Well, welcome to California. I think the speed limits here are just a suggestion, particularly for truck drivers and lane changing must be a requirement. That’s the only logical explanation. And why change from one lane to the next? That’s way too easy. Beginner level. The experts change two, three even four lanes at a time. Mario Kart but in real life. This insanity went on until we had passed the San Francisco exits and then normality sort of returned.
We stopped for diesel just outside of Tracy and decided to look for a place to stop for the night. The problem was that we had passed quite a few rest stops in California that were closed for renovation, why they couldn’t just do one at a time I’m not sure but we eventually found one that was open but it was on the Northbound side of the interstate at Coalinga. We checked the map and found it was only about a mile back from that rest stop to another exit where we could get back on the Southbound side in the morning, so we decided to pull off and head the short distance to the Northern side rest area for the night.
Emma made a curry for dinner, we video called with the kids for a bit to catch up on events back home and watched some You Tube before going to bed.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Today was Superbowl Sunday. Not that we are at all interested in the football (that’s American Football everywhere else in the world, we don’t mean soccer which is real football.) Taylor Swift’s boyfriend’s team were playing the Eagles. It seems that we often end up in the US on Superbowl Sunday without even realising it. Year’s ago, we went to Seattle for the weekend and a barman in a pub asked if we were there to watch the Superbowl. We were probably the only people in the country who didn’t even know it was Superbowl Sunday. The ad’s are funny though. Even though they don’t broadcast them in Canada. We have to watch them on the news.
Tomorrow will be the last push onto San Diego, ready for our appointment on Tuesday.
