I am finally up to date now!  Also WordPress says this is my 100th post.

Day 5 was essentially a travel day.  I told Roxie we should not probably sleep in today but get a relatively early start since we had some hills to go over and I would rather do it when it is cooler.  She complied, indirectly.  Her back was hurting her in bed so she was up around 6am!  I didn’t roll out until about 8am which is NOT sleeping in for me when traveling!

We worked on all the teardown and tow vehicle connecting.  Roxie is trying to learn all the aspects about the trailer, she tells me it is in case something happens to me when traveling.  I am thinking she might want to go out WITHOUT me sometimes!  She still has not actually towed it on the road so that will be the dead giveaway when that happens!

We got on the road about 9:15 or 9:30.  Immediately we pulled the grade up to Shasta Lake and the Pit River Bridge.  After that is was a bunch of minor ups and downs until Dunsmuir which had a long steep stretch.  A bit after Yreka we had another up AND down portion of road.  The down portion ended up at the Randolph Collier rest area where we decided to have lunch.  I always remember this rest area as a very nice one.  I was teasing that California puts a nice one here to convince all visitors that the rest of the rest areas will be just like this.  HA!  The Klamath river runs right by it.  Hiway 96 takes off there which will take you to Happy Camp (a road I would NEVER take a trailer on).  Here is a pic Roxie took of the river there:

After the rest area we had more climbing but the real treat came with the descent into Ashland, OR.  This is a pretty long 6% descent.  Roxie doesn’t mind climbing hills with the trailer but she really doesn’t like coming down.  The truck did very will, I will explain at the end.  It got a little tense for her when she started smelling brakes but luckily it was someone else because I wasn’t using any.

When we were descending we could see all the smoke in the air from the Oregon fires.  It got progressively worse and hotter, it seemed, the farther north we went.  Medford was worse and Grants Pass was the worst.  It got better after Grants Pass and is relatively clear here in Canyonville.  We had some more hills until we arrived it it was all good.

My concerns for the truck have to do with the fact that it is getting older and we are taxing it more with the current trailers.  The old trailer maxed out at 6300lb weight.  This one will max at 10000lb even though we are only pushing 8000 in it.  I can feel the extra weight going up and down the hills.  The truck is 10 years old with 122000 miles on it.  Some will say that is young for a diesel but this is the first year of the notorious Ford 6.0 diesel.  On the flip side, I do not chip the engine, I have appropriate maintenance and I don’t push it beyond what it should be designed to do.  All that said I am still on the lookout for oddities.

The performance up hills is different.  No more boiling up a hill at 65mph with the 25′ trailer, barely getting out of overdrive.  Now we can still get up the hill but we may go down to 50mph.  Down the hill is very different.  Using the tow haul mode I always had a problem keeping the 25′ at a good speed without too many RPM’s.  Oddly the 31′ seems to work fantastic with tow haul and can keep us at 50-55 on a 5% grade.  Not sure why.

I guess I am just being a bit worrisome about this and I should just take it as it comes.

We are now sitting outside in the cool under that stars and listing to the insects in the woods.  Nice to finally get here.

This post will have more pictures, I promise.  I don’t know why I have not taken more photos but I was more attentive today.

This was a day to do some Redding stuff.  I lived here from 1971-1980 and Roxie lived in some towns just south for about the same time.  Since it was Sunday Roxie went with her friend Gail to church.  I would have gone with them but my blog was having some issues.  REALLY!  I would have gone.  But I spent 2 hours in Burger King working on it.  Got it fixed and I will have a separate blog entry describing it.  After church we had a nice lunch at a local ‘hip’ sandwich shop, The Best Little Sandwich Shop.  It was very good!  Shortly after lunch we had to get Gail back to her home as she had a prior engagement.

Off to a bike ride!  Yes we are nuts to go on a bike ride in Redding during a summer day but it seemed a bit cooler than normal.  We started out on the Sacramento River Trail.  We biked a total time of 90 minutes.  We did the loop up the east side of the river from the park, over the concrete ribbon bridge by Keswick dam and back down the west side of the river.

Here is a shot of Keswick Dam from the ribbon bridge.  I remember Keswick Dam, actually the lake.  My dad used to like to take a cool boat ride on the lake in the evenings but he would make ME get in the water to launch and retrieve the boat.  It was COLD!!  The water for that lake came right out of the bottom of Shasta Lake.

Here is a picture of the concrete ribbon bridge.  It is the only one of its kind this continent.  Read more about it here.

And here is a picture of Roxie crossing the bridge in her neon outfit (not real clear, I had to zoom in).  I am sure she was terrified!

Once we did the loop the next natural thing was to ride on down to the Sundial bridge.  I guess this is a pretty famous bridge and you read about in that previous link about the concrete ribbon bridge.  It was only about 1 mile round trip down there.  The platform of the bridge is glass panels and they actually let you ride your bikes over it (5mph).  Pics:

After all that we were pretty beat.  We still did some needed shopping for groceries and fuel.  Went back to the trailer, had our leftover Indian food.  We then visited with Mike and we got a photo of the two of us:

I almost forgot!  Here is the requisite shot of our trailer in the campsite.  This is space 34:

Next stop: Canyonville, OR