Almost as Good as Bears . . .

June 6, 2011 Uncategorized

Almost as Good as Bears . . .

This morning started off with a call from our daughter Brandi just checking in and talking about Landon’s latest antics.

About 10:30 we headed out on our Bear Hunting daytrip, but our first stop was for breakfast at the Hi-Lo Diner where we ate dinner last night. Jan had eggs, bacon, hash browns, and biscuits. I had Eggs Benedict with country fries, and it was more than I could eat.

One thing we had noticed last night was this inscription on their coffee cups.

Now I would have sworn that Dawson Creek, BC, Canada thinks that they are the beginning of the AL-CAN highway. At least they thought so when we were there 3 years ago.

So this morning I thought to ask, and their answer kind of makes sense.

The cashier said that US 97 originates in Weed, CA and goes all the way up to Dawson Creek. And checking it out when we got home shows they’re right.

US 97 runs up to the Canada border at Oroville, WA and there becomes PH (Provincial Highway) 97 and, poof!, 1400 miles later you’re in Dawson Creek. And actually PH 97 runs all the way up to Watson Lake in the Yukon as the AL-CAN along with PH 1.

But when you get Dawson Creek, it’s still another 1500 miles to Fairbanks. A long trip.

For our bear hunt, we left Weed and headed south on I-5 to Mt. Shasta where we got on CA-89 and drove west.

All on a rumor.

A lady at the RV park that someone told her that someone had seen bears out around Dana, CA, so off we went.

And it was a beautiful drive.

Dana is about 50 miles away and about 10 miles before we got there we came down out of the mountains into a wide, flat valley that, although at about 3300 feet, looked like the Kansas prairie.

This beautiful little church is in the small community of Glenburn.

Still bearless and heading home, we saw a sign for a Wildlife Viewing area in the Shasta National Forest so off we went. Most of the road was really good, but we kept going until we were on a road like this.

Still finding no bears we turned back to the campground we had passed and stopped to stretch our legs. Hearing running water Jan and I walked over to the river and found this beautiful falls.

Called Lower Falls, it has been fished since the early 1800’s. Salmon and trout run through here still today, and if it was the right time of the year there would be bears here.

A day late, a dollar short.

I also did this short video.

Looking around we noticed that there were chipmunks everywhere, zipping around like hummingbirds. Of course Jan just had to feed them.

Who knew chipmunks like Rold Gold Pretzel’s?

They had obviously been fed before because when people show up, they come running . . . or zipping, as it were.

Jan said seeing all the chipmunks running around was almost as good as seeing bears.

Coming home we stopped off at the Dance Country RV Park in McCloud to drop off some Gypsy Journals. It’s a really nice park, well laid out with a lot of space.

Getting back to I-5 in Mt. Shasta, we decided to head about 35 miles north to Yreka, CA, and the nearest Wal-Mart. While we were there I stopped in at the Radio Shack, and then it was on to the Wal-Mart next door.

By the time we left the Wal-Mart it was after 4 pm so we decided to have dinner at Black Bear Diner before heading home so we could compare it with the Hi-Lo Diner.

And it was quickly obvious that these two places had the same origin. The menus, made up to look like newspapers, were almost identical, as was most of the menu items. And the food was just as good, too.

As we pulled in, we noticed an Ambassador Motorcoach towing an SUV on a trailer. Jan and I play a game in these cases and try to identify who in the restaurant are the RV’ers. But in this case it wasn’t hard. It turned out to be someone we knew, Ray Kannada, from the Gypsy Journal Rally in Yuma this past March.

And he was also at the Lake Minden Thousand Trails in Nicolaus, CA about a week before we were there.

It’s really amazing sometime how small the RV world is.

Right after Ray left, Nick Russell called to say they were changing their plans since they didn’t like the South Jetty Thousand Trails at Florence so they were heading up to the Elk’s Lodge instead.

Coming back to Weed, we had some really scenic views. Here’s another shot of Mt. Shasta still partially covered by clouds. Hopefully it will clear before we leave on Saturday.