Friday night Phoenix asks me if I want to go on the road trip we'd sort of been plotting (but not as far as planning) to go to In 'n' Out Burger and visit my parents in central California the very next day. Well, I contacted a peer at work and asked if she could cover Sunday night for me; she said yes, and my boss ok'd this. We started texting/calling up friends, looking for other people to come along with us and share the gas costs. Earlier in the week, we'd talked about taking Tombstone to Crater Lake this weekend anyway, so we convinced him to come along with the stipulation that we hit it on the return trip. I got hold of my folks and assured us a clean, safe place to sleep the drive off once we got ourselves south.
We planned to leave around midnight Saturday night, after a couple of parties. We didn't end up leaving Phoenix's house until about 3am. We got out on the road and listened to some tunes. We stopped for gas and Tombstone took over music control - he played us some funny techno and other silly/crude songs. We hit up the first of many rest areas that we stopped at, New Found Glory in our ears.
By 7am, we were well on our way south, sort of nearing the border. Here was my view from the backseat as the sun began to rise:
Around 10:30, we passed Lake Shasta. It's always been one of my favorite stretches of I-5; it's just pretty. The weather was awful, though. I wasn't able to get a picture for the longest time, but before we passed it altogether, I got this shot:
For the vast majority of the trip, Phoenix was behind the wheel and Tombstone in the passenger seat; for the whole thing I was in the backseat, shifting between driver-side, passenger-side, and laying down on the foam on top of the folded down seats. This is what I saw for the majority of the drive: (you can see me peaking out in the rear-view mirror)
We stopped here and there for potty breaks and naps along the way. Our plan at the time was to get our burgers and go eat at my folks' place and then sleep. About 20 minutes away from the Burgers, Phoenix got out of the car near a little dirt road to take a leak. On his way back to the car, he stepped in a mud puddle! He was in flip-flops, and they stuck - he couldn't pull his feet up, so he just had to step out of the puddle and get his feet all kinds of dirty!! He was a mess, and I couldn't help but laugh my head off at how dirty he was, and how my parents would be taking this. Right about that point, my phone died, so I couldn't let my mother know we were coming straight there. Well, they took it in stride when we showed up at the backdoor, dripping mud, and asking if Phoenix could use the shower, the laundry and the hose. We decided to delay our Burger feast until after we had slept, as none of us was really in the mood to get right back into the car. Tombstone racked out first, with Phoenix following quickly behind. I, on the other hand, payed a short visit to my grandmother before getting a little shut-eye. She was doing well when I got there, and was very understanding about how I couldn't stay long as I'd been awake all night.
We got up to the smells of my mom's home-cooked spaghetti. We had our fill, trying not to stuff ourselves knowing that we still had burgers to eat. We said our farewells, shared a round of hugs, and crammed back into the car. It was about 9 at night and our plan was to go get Burgers, then drive to a suburb of Sacramento to visit a friend of Phoenix's and do a little karaoke. The burgers were tasty - I had half a double-double (and finished it on the road a half hour later), and 'Nix and Tombstone both had double-doubles with onions and fries. Phoenix also got his sister a t-shirt, as it was her birthday, and three cheeseburgers to-go to bring back to friends up here (with no cooler!). We got back on the road into the city to meet up with the friend, only to find out when we got there that it was too far past her bedtime, being at this point past 10pm (we were eventually informed it was to accommodate her 4am wake-up time), and that she had had to go home without seeing us. We sat in the parking lot for a bit, weighing our options: go in and sing anyway, go back and maybe sleep a little more at my parents, or just start our trek back north. We settled on the latter: northward bound.
We programmed our way to Crater Lake into one of the fancy phones and made our way out of the suburb and back onto I-5 North. We drove up for maybe an hour before realizing that the boys were way to tired to drive, and that my license had expired and I wasn't an eligible driver for this adventure. It was about 11:30 when we shoved all the food and stuff behind the passenger seat and 'Nix and I tried to cuddle up with one of the backseats folded down. We offered Tombstone a tent to pitch, but he joked that he already had one. He decided to stick to the front seat. It was a tight fit in the backseat, and there wasn't really much cuddling; more wiggling and complaining, but hey it's a road trip!
Around 2:30 or 3am we got out on the road again. At about 5:00, we stopped for gas sort of near Lake Shasta again. We spent this time just chilling out, the passengers catching a few Zzzs. We were past the border by the time dawn came to us, beginning around 7am. Here are several shots of our views:
Around maybe 8am, we got hungry and stopped in for a bit at Cinders Cafe outside Klamath Falls. It was a good call; our waitress was a hoot! Tombstone filled his tank on coffee, Phoenix had some hot chocolate, and I just settled with water. The food was good and plentiful! Tombstone was the only one able to finish their meal.
We got back on the road, and after a little more slightly icy highway, we hit the real snow. First just a little dusting on the ground, then mounded on the side of the road, then full-blow banks of snow piled high.
Here is a few glimpses of what our drive was like (both the silliness and the driving conditions):
When we got to the top, we found the road to the rim closed!! We pulled off to the side and saw a sign for the Visitor Center. It was supposed to open at 10am, which was soon, so we wandered around outside for a bit. The boys answered nature's call and I shivered some and wandered back to the Center. It was a little warmer inside, so we waited there until it opened (I got the use of modern facilities inside, haha). We were informed by the man there (park ranger?) that there had been a snow storm the night before and that they needed to plow the road before it would open again. He said it ought to be sometime in the afternoon; we tried to clarify afternoon like 1 or afternoon like 4, but he said he couldn't really say.
After a bit of chatting, we decided to get ourselves some sleep in the car, and see if the rim was open when we woke up. I had to work that night, so I decided that I was going to have to just tough it up and go to sleep without seeing the cool sights. The rest is a bit fuzzy, as I was half asleep while it was going on, but when the boys woke around noon, the road had been cleared. We drove the last 3 miles up to the rim. They got out and wandered about, as I groggily napped in the backseat. This is what they brought back with them:
From there on, the trip was basically what you would expect in a car with three people running on little-to-no sleep. We didn't budget our time as well as we should have, and I barely made it to work on time. But it was a fun trip!
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