Day 36

June 20,2024

On the move early today.  Up and out by 6am.  Thankful to leave the hysterical park police in my rearview mirror, hehe!

Last year when Mom and I left Redding, we took a meandering path over to the coast.  We drove past my old place in Marysville and then cut over to the coast.  As it turns out, Carolyn had just come back from the coast and warned us not to take a particular road, even if the Lady of the Map App insisted.

Unfortunately, Mom and I took a call from my eldest brother David at precisely the moment that I was turning onto that very road.  I’m not blaming David… I was just really interested to hear how Maureen was feeling and so wasn’t paying good enough attention to the street signs.

The road started out good enough, but kept getting narrower and narrower, curvier and more treacherous.

At one point, as we were going left around a blind hairpin turn, we met someone coming the other way.  I pulled farther right and stopped, while he screeched to a stop himself.  Pretty sure we were about a foot apart when everyone stopped moving. 

He backed up and rolled down his window.  We made our apologies, and I asked him how much farther until we reached the end of the road.  15 more miles, oh no!!!

About a mile up the road, we found a small turn out where mom got out and went back to the trailer to change her pants.  I just sat in the driver’s seat peeling my fingers off the steering wheel.  That was hair raising.  And we had 15 more miles to go, Ahhhh!  30 miles of bad road, yikes! 

When we finally got to camp, Mom admitted she was a little nervous when that guy almost hit us.  Remember when I pulled right, I got us so close to the edge of the road, Mom said when she looked out the window, she could not see the road at all, just the slop of the mountain heading down and no bottom in sight.  Yikes!