Despite the lingering bad taste of the bad cop, there was a lot to like about Eugene--the girls are nice, especially this cute one I found at the Travellers Inn:
One of the great things about unhurried travel is the privilege of wandering, and without our young assistants Peter and Patrick, we were able to wander about Eugene for a couple of hours before leaving for Southern California. Our discoveries: Voodoo donuts--a tongue in cheek donut shop with esoteric flavors and shapes (example: a maple bar with bacon on top as their breakfast special), and an old style photo booth--room for the entrepreneurs anywhere!
Alice also found some nice jewelry at a place that sold pyrrus.com jewelry.
A poem to Eugene:
Our first night alone in months,
no surprise, the sun seems especially bright
outlining the dark window blinds of our hotel room
and petunias in heavy pots are hung between arches,
our friend the hobo emerges from the room below
headed for the MacKenzie River, lamenting the lost days
of Merle Haggard and a summertime home in Bakersfield.
Repacking is easy after a one-night stand such as ours...
Once we got out of town, central Oregon was a long rolling ride--dry yellow hills and more lumber trucks than I can remember seeing anywhere. Alice drove while I spoke on the phone and got a little work done. We switched after the call and she took up her book "Three Cups of Tea," which she'll be using in class this year. A nice conversation about how to teach, and her reflections on the class she took this year as we crossed the rolling hills--culminating in several high passes near Grant's Pass.
Over the next couple of hours we approached and passed Mt Shasta, arriving in our vista as we came down the Oregon passes into California. From the north, Shasta appears to have two peaks--the high central peak and a shoulder peak which appears to have a crater like appearance. Once into California, perfunctory
roadside stops to ask about whether we're carrying fresh vegetable or fruit and it's off to the plains below the magic mountain, or so I related as I told Alice of Mike and my attempted summit of Shasta twenty years past and our visit to the boys of Shasta abbey on its slopes.
A couple of hot hours of driving later we made Redding, passing Shasta Lake and it's red slopes, the water low in mid-summer, many boats fingering through many valleys. In addition to the pleasure of wandering, we had the pleasure of negotiation--first a stop at a strangely abandoned, or so it seemed, environmental learning center in Redding--with a strange zigarut, that looked as though it was designed to mimic or model some larger structure, but unclear as to what.
So I suggested a water park as a place to cool off (it was nearly 100 degrees), but she countered with the suggestion of a nearby (or so it seemed to Google Maps) public swimming pool. A good call since it had an Olympic sized length well suited to our need for exercise!
After a non-descriptor mexican dinner, it was off again into the night and long road trip 5 hours later that culminated in trying to stay awake until Merced arrived, radio stations blinking in and out, until 1 am we arrived at the Super 8!
Location:Merced, CA
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