After my morning coffee and some work, I got back on the road. It would be a longer travel day to get farther south to warmer weather than the 41º morning I woke up to. It started with a beautiful scenic drive to Klamath Falls. I stopped at Love’s to fill my gas tank before entering California, where prices are more than $1 per gallon higher than in Oregon. Since I was already stopped anyway, I filled my own tank with a burger at Carl’s Jr. before continuing on.
Before long, Oregon Route 39 turned into California Route 139 as I crossed the state line. Here’s where things got annoying. California has a maximum speed limit of 55 for any vehicle that’s towing, even if the limit for everyone else is higher. This isn’t a big deal on roads with two or more lanes in each direction. I can just sit in the right lane and let the whole world pass me. But on these narrow two-lane highways with a 65 mph speed limit, I quickly become a moving roadblock. Traffic stacks up behind me, and then starts taking unsafe stupid chances to pass me and resume their speed limit.
This creates an even more dangerous situation than just allowing vehicles towing trailers to go the regular speed limit. I have to drive with one eye on my mirrors, just to keep an eye on idiots like this making unsafe passes, which takes my attention away from ahead of me where it should be. I could’ve chosen to just go 65 anyway, which probably would’ve been safer, but CHP was out in force. My out-of-state plates stuck out like a sore thumb, and I didn’t want Ponch and Jon to give me a speeding ticket for going the speed limit.
(Don’t worry, I wasn’t holding my phone taking pictures of these illegal passes. I’ve moved the phone holder on my dashboard so I can see it better in addition to my Apple CarPlay unit, with the side effect of giving the camera a good angle as well. I can just have the camera app running, then tap the button to take a picture.)
There is one thing California does right, though. When the road widens to give us an occasional passing zone, they use the yellow line to force traffic into the right lane, preventing slow people from hogging the passing lane.
After a while, I took a break in the middle of Modoc National Forest. I kept noticing nice pull-offs just off some of the Forest Service roads I passed. When I had no traffic behind me I was able to slow down for these intersections and spotted one early enough to make the turn. It was good to take a break, stretch my legs, and let Lister roam a bit. In fact, I did all of these at the same time by hooking up his leash and letting him take me for a walk. It must’ve tired him out because he slept for a while when we got back on the road.
A while later, traffic came to a complete stop for about 20 minutes for road construction. I shut the engine off and rolled down the windows instead of wasting gas. Every car in front of me had passed me at some point, including the cop at the front of the line. Even he had to wait for the pilot car to show up, then lead us at a painfully slow pace through the construction zone. I’m all for keeping the workers safe, but there has to be a better way to keep traffic flowing than this.
Eventually, I pulled into Chateau Walmart in Susanville for the night. This was the first major town I’d seen in a few days, but I really didn’t need anything since I stocked up before leaving Cottage Grove. I did grab a sub from the Subway inside, to justify my existence there as a customer as well as to avoid cooking.
Lister really liked this tree. He kept rubbing up on it. It was probably easier to scratch an itch that way than to do it himself. I managed to connect to Walmart’s Wi-Fi and entertained myself for the night. The lot went silent after the store closed at 10:00 p.m. I had trouble sleeping, but not because of the noise.
The next morning I took us to Susanville Ranch Park on the other side of town. This let Lister roam outside freely while I worked, something I won’t do in a Walmart parking lot. This is a popular place for dog walkers. Many were amused by my cat who thinks he’s a dog, which started some fun conversations. I took Lister for another walk on his leash before hitting the road for the day’s drive. This is a neat park, with lots of trails to explore. We didn’t go too far, though. Lister’s short legs can only go so far.
I was also amused by this piece of redneck engineering in the bathroom! Zip ties can fix practically anything.
The escape from California was more like yesterday, being a 55 mph roadblock on the 65 mph US 395. The one advantage of this pace is that I was getting roughly 16 miles per gallon instead of my usual 13. That seems to be the sweet spot where the transmission can remain in its highest gear and the engine doesn’t have to work harder to go faster. I compared my distance to the Nevada border to my remaining miles to empty and realized that I could easily make it to Reno before filling up again, completely avoiding California’s sky-high gas prices.
I breathed a sigh of relief as we approached the Nevada border and the road widened to two lanes in each direction. Soon we entered Nevada. I could resume reasonable speeds once again, and keep my attention in front of me where it belongs. Before long I rolled into Reno, with plenty of gas to spare.
Smokey Da Van 