We had another very long day of driving ahead of us, so tried to set off early again but didn’t quite manage. It was about the same time as yesterday when we did get going. The saving grace was that we knew today and yesterday were going to be the longest days of the trip, so it was nice to get them out of the way early on.
As I mentioned yesterday, driving Al is not the most comfortable or pleasurable experience. It’s made worse by the condition of the roads, which are horrendously bumpy, and when driving a 32′ RV you sure know about all the bumps; everything rattles and squeaks and bangs and clunks. Even the interstates, which you would expect to be in pretty decent shape, are really bad at times (well, a lot of the time in reality). Then add in the road noise – the engine (a V10) is pretty loud in itself, but the road noise seems to be amplified in Al, plus of course if you’ve ever been in a vehicle with Müfit you will know that he can’t drive 2 minutes down the road without having music on. So with the squeaking, rattles, clunks and bangs, road noise, engine noise, and music, I have no chance of hearing what the kids are saying from behind me; in fact, Müfit, who is about 3 feet away from me, frequently has to shout to get me to hear him. [Mum – I don’t think you’d have liked all the noise if you had come with us!]
Anyway, we continued south on the I5, driving into, and all the way through Oregon. The further south we got, the scenery became more interesting and hilly – more like what we’re used to at home. Of course, when you live in such an amazing place as we do, it’s difficult to be impressed by the scenery anywhere, but we do like northern California.
We had several stops along the way during the day, and then one final stop at a rest area before getting to our intended destination. We stopped Al as usual, and opened the door, only to find that the power steps – that are supposed to open when you open the door – didn’t come down. The steps are needed because Al is so high off the ground but for us humans it’s not too difficult to jump; for our old doggos it is quite difficult. Jasper is now 12 and is definitely getting less mobile and cannot jump as easily as he used to. Charlie is 9 so he’s also a senior dog, but his problem is that he’s that much smaller so can’t jump too high.
There wasn’t much we could do so we helped the dogs in and out – luckily Al is not that high off the ground when you’re not parked up with the stabilizing jacks down, so it wasn’t a major problem.
Our destination was the Mount Shasta area. We’d already cased the area on Google streetview and found several places on a road within the national forest where we believed we would be able to park overnight for free. We started along the road and came across an area very quickly where we could just pull off the road. There were no signs telling us that we couldn’t park, so we got ourselves set up and hoped we didn’t have a knock on the door in the middle of the night!
Unfortunately, getting the dogs in and out of Al was difficult. With the jacks down, Al is really quite high so I got a large plastic box and put it at the bottom of the steps that are fitted to the inside of Al, but Jasper still had a lot of trouble and we had to lift him in. Lifting Charlie is easy as he’s so light in comparison!
Bolgil Family Adventures 