Cali-Bound

                            
ROAD TRIP:  No post last night - sorry. We were enduring Seattle rush hour traffic, and then it was a straight shot down I-5 to Vancouver, where we had a nice dinner and watched "The Wizard of Oz" with G&G R. Then at 6 this a.m. it was back to I-5 in the dark and a heavy fog, California bound.  We're heading to a weekend wine country wedding.

It was dark and pea soup thick fog for the first four hours or so of travel, but once we got to Southern Oregon, we could actually see a little landscape, which was nice, as three of the four of us haven't driven this stretch before. We saw lots of pretty fall colors, that's for sure.
We saw signs at places with intriguing names, like Indian Mark Park, and Jump Off Joe Creek. For quite awhile, we drove along the Applegate Trail. Blazed by the Applegate family of Missouri in the mid 1800s, the route was supposed to be a safer alternative to the Oregon Trail. We caught glimpses of the Rogue River, and we exited I-5 at Ashland for a lunch stop. That's where we found the cast of sign (pictured above) in the weeds, near a gas station. So funny!

We saw our first ever Bear Xing sign, and many, many signs for liquor stores with names like Liquor Expo and Liquor Cabinet and Liquor Barn. I was hoping for Liquo-Rama, but never saw one. Maybe I need to trademark that.

After a couple of miscues, we managed to stumble upon the most wonderful spot for lunch!! Local, sustainable, tasty food, great service and wonderful beer. Yay for Standing Stone Brewing Company!

Curious, we asked the waitress the genesis of the business' name. She told us it's named after a geological formation that looks like a finger sticking up, right by Mount Ashland. Standing Stone is its native name. These days more people call it Pilot Rock.

Along the Sacramento River, not too far south of the Oregon border, we ogled Caste Crags out the car window. Super cool! They really did look like castles (more so than in this Wikipedia photo).
            
We got a nice glimpse of of Mt. Shasta and its snowy top.

After about eight or nine hours total of driving, we stopped in the teeming metropolis of Corning, CA for the evening. We had our choice of hundreds of hotels along our route, but we chose to stay at the Best Western "Plus" in Corning for two reasons. First and foremost, it had an indoor pool for the kids.  Second, it was close to the freeway.

We weren't here for 10 minutes before the kids had their suits on, ready to swim. I walked down to the pool with them. It's lovely to look at, but they were super hesitant about getting in, despite how badly they wanted to swim.

They said it was cold. I have to admit, I initially thought they were just being wusses. After about 5 minutes, though, I dipped a toe in and felt it for myself. Brrrr! It WAS very cold. As in unheated cold.  I looked around the area for a pool thermometer. What I saw was THIS ...

Oh sure, there's a pool heater. It's just not heating the pool. :(  Apparently it's scheduled to go in next week. That will be super helpful to us. NOT. Lame, Best Western "Plus" in Corning for not telling us at check in (when the kids were talking about swimming) that the indoor pool was unheated today, and for not warning us as the teeth chattering kids are trying to get in the pool (the pool is wholly visible to the check in desk, just separated by a glass wall) and for not even apologizing - let alone offer some kind of comp - when we asked if the pool heater was broken. Super crappy customer 'service' IMHO. Perhaps I'll send corportate a link to this blog post. ...