Nevada Trip Day, 11.

 

The last leg of the journey home.

We left our camp at the 95/80 Intersection around 9:00 and headed west on I-80.
It was early enough so that when we went through Reno the traffic was fairly light (for Reno) and we breezed on through.

Over the Sierras.

We trudged over Donner Pass and turned onto Highway 20 at Immigrant Gap.
It’s all down hill from here to Williams.
 

A brake light problem.

We took a short break on a side road.
When we continued down the highway I noticed that the brake lights on Bob’s van weren’t working. I informed him over the CB and he found a good spot near a forest fire station to pull off and repair the lights.

As it turned out the problem was just a bad fuse and Bob had it sorted out in a short time. Fortunately I had the correct fuse and we were off again.

Crossing the Sacramento valley.

When we got to Marysville/Yuba City the traffic was typical for those two towns that straddle the Yuba River. In a word, “thick”. With patience and luck we made it through and out the other side to open highway.

The next obstacle was Colusa; a pretty farming town in the middle of the Sacramento Valley.
If you follow the highway through downtown Colusa, it can be a trial.  However, there is a short cut that if you take the correct left turn off the highway, “Fremont Street”, it will take you right through the residential section of town with only a couple of stop signals to impede your progress.

We missed Fremont Street but were able to catch the next one which worked just as well, with a few more stop signs.

About two miles west of Colusa is the Colusa Wildlife Refuge. We took the turnoff to the refuge as we were planning to stop here for a long lunch break. It turned out that the roads in the refuge were closed so we pulled into a shady spot near the entrance and took our break.

When we were driving on the entrance gravel road the CB’s were breaking up. We did a couple of tests and figured out that this time the problem was a bad external speaker in my van. We took care of that and got back on the road continuing our trip across the valley.

Crossing Lake County.

We stopped at Williams to fill the fuel tanks on the vans. Continuing west we crossed over into Lake county.
Along the highway you can see evidence of the recent wild fires.

We turned south on the west side of Clear Lake, toward Lucerne where we took the Hopland Grade over to Highway 101.
Hopland Grade is one of the windiest roads in the county. We were hoping this would be a short cut. As it turned out the road is so twisted that It takes about the same amount of time as following 20 all the way to Ukiah to catch 101.

Once we got to 101 we headed south on the last dash for home. Bob turned off for Guerneville at East Side Road  while I continued on to Santa Rosa. I got home around 5:00. Nine to five and eight hour drive.

The trip was great! We saw some old haunts and some new (to me) territory. The sunsets were amazing. The vans performed as they were designed. The perfect one person traveling machine; Go where you want, when you get there throw out the chairs and you are camped. When its time for bed you climb in, close the doors and you are safe. Relatively.

Here is a one more sunset picture just to cap it off.