Halfway to... Middle of Nowhere
Redding, CA - Fri, 30 Aug 2019, 11:00pm
Tonight's another Friday Night Halfway. Tonight we're halfway to... the middle of nowhere. 😨
Halfway to nowhere has got to be somewhere, though. Tonight's somewhere is Redding, California, a burgeoning town of going on 100,000 people at the north end of California's Central Valley. Perched beneath enormous Lake Shasta, and beyond that Mt. Shasta's iconic 14,180 ft. peak (4,322 m), Redding is a gateway to the far northern part of the state. And it is into that part we head after sunrise Saturday. Into... the middle of nowhere.
Yes, far northern California is sparsely populated. Geologically speaking, much of the land north and east of Mt. Shasta is volcanic high desert. It's within that area we're going, to Lava Beds National Monument. The nearest town of any size is Tulelake, 20 miles away... and its size is fewer than 1,000 people. Beyond that you'd have to go 50 miles, to Klamath Falls (pop. 21,000) in Oregon, to find anything recognizable as even a small city.
But back to the Friday Night Halfway thing. This evening we took a different approach than usual. Instead of me waiting for Hawk to get home from work, change, and be ready to head back out- which generally means leaving at 7pm, or 6:45 if we're lucky- I left home at 4:30 and met her at her office at 5:30. She'd packed her suitcase the night before, and I loaded the car before I left. We hit the road directly from her office.
Arguably the traffic was a bit worse heading through San Francisco and across the Bay Bridge, but we had a 90 minute earlier start on the drive. As a result we completed the 250 miles to Redding (225 miles from her office) and checked into our hotel at 10:40pm. If we'd left from home at 7pm we'd have at midnight, plus or minus. I'm definitely glad to be done with the drive well before 11. We'll seriously consider this approach on future Friday Night Halfway trips.
Keep reading: next blog in this series.
Tonight's another Friday Night Halfway. Tonight we're halfway to... the middle of nowhere. 😨
Halfway to nowhere has got to be somewhere, though. Tonight's somewhere is Redding, California, a burgeoning town of going on 100,000 people at the north end of California's Central Valley. Perched beneath enormous Lake Shasta, and beyond that Mt. Shasta's iconic 14,180 ft. peak (4,322 m), Redding is a gateway to the far northern part of the state. And it is into that part we head after sunrise Saturday. Into... the middle of nowhere.
Yes, far northern California is sparsely populated. Geologically speaking, much of the land north and east of Mt. Shasta is volcanic high desert. It's within that area we're going, to Lava Beds National Monument. The nearest town of any size is Tulelake, 20 miles away... and its size is fewer than 1,000 people. Beyond that you'd have to go 50 miles, to Klamath Falls (pop. 21,000) in Oregon, to find anything recognizable as even a small city.
But back to the Friday Night Halfway thing. This evening we took a different approach than usual. Instead of me waiting for Hawk to get home from work, change, and be ready to head back out- which generally means leaving at 7pm, or 6:45 if we're lucky- I left home at 4:30 and met her at her office at 5:30. She'd packed her suitcase the night before, and I loaded the car before I left. We hit the road directly from her office.
Arguably the traffic was a bit worse heading through San Francisco and across the Bay Bridge, but we had a 90 minute earlier start on the drive. As a result we completed the 250 miles to Redding (225 miles from her office) and checked into our hotel at 10:40pm. If we'd left from home at 7pm we'd have at midnight, plus or minus. I'm definitely glad to be done with the drive well before 11. We'll seriously consider this approach on future Friday Night Halfway trips.
Keep reading: next blog in this series.