July 30-August 1, 2002: Travel Page 1

Just about like last year, I caught up on work, bills, and also relaxed in Southern California for a couple of weeks before starting out again at the end of July.  This circuit of the country turned out to be a little bumpier than most...even before I started, I ran the set of tires on my car down to the steel belts.  I was driving from San Diego the 90 or so miles up to Mom and Dad's place...there's an area of Interstate 5 between San Clemente and Mission Viejo where the freeway was expanded and the lane extensions mean there are a lot of "seams" in the lanes.  Well, the right rear tire settled into one of those for too long and it finally wore through.  Fortunately, I was able to roll the car off the freeway with the flat in the Mission Viejo area.  With a little help from a  AAA tower, we unpacked the  trunk full of travel stuff and popped the spare tire on.

I finally replaced all four tires, probably about 10000 miles too late.

Then it was up to Portland for several days.  With no shuttle launches this summer, I had more time to sightsee.  I started out on July 30th by driving up Pacific Coast Highway, beginning out in the Santa Barbara area.  Unfortunately, the coast was foggy.  From Santa Barbara, I wandering along PCH and Highway 101 along the coast and in the fog, going through Lompoc and the Vandenberg Air Force Base area.  (Yes, I would like to see a launch from there...perhaps a Delta IV Heavy sometime next year?) From there, it was through San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay to San Simeon, where I stopped to take a look at Hearst Castle.  The tour was a couple of hours long, so I shelved that for another time...what with the fog, it was becoming apparent that this wasn't a good time to see the sights.  From San Simeon, PCH winds through the coastal ranges through Big Sur and into the Carmel and Monterey area.  Here's a few shots that tell the story of the whole day driving up the coast:

Morro Bay	San Simeon State Beach (just by Hearst Castle)	In the Big Sur area

It was about 65-70 degrees in the overcast until I gave up on being able to see a sunny coastal area at about 2 pm or so in the Monterey area and headed inland on Road 156 to back to Highway 101.  By the time I got to Gilroy, it was sunny and 92...I stopped for the day in the San Jose area and rethought my plan.

Originally, I wanted to hug the coast on PCH and/or 101 over the Golden Gate and then all the way into Oregon or at least up to Eureka or the Oregon border (the Crescent City area).  From there, I was going to head inland over to see Crater Lake, but as it seems it has been everywhere, it was dry in the Calfornia-Oregon border area and a big forest fire was burning out of control and cutting off the main road (and the one I wanted to take), Route 199 that links Crescent City and Grants Pass/I-5.  So I chucked that plan out and decided to just aim for Crater Lake on August 1st and then drive up to Portland from there later that day.  The next day, the 31st, I went around San Francisco on the East Bay side and over to Interstate 5 just north of Sacramento.  As I got into the mountainous part of northern California and southern Oregon, smoke from the fires got thick enough to start to affect driving visibility.  I stopped in Medford, where the smoke drifted in and out during the rest of the day and night.

From Medford, it was up State Road 62 on the 1st to the Crater Lake area.  Along the way, I passed close to another forest fire and the smoke got really bad; as I got closer to Crater Lake, it occurred to me that the smoke might make for poor viewing, but I lucked out because it was still clear "enough" when I got there before lunchtime: 

This is what it looked like on the south side of the Rim Drive...looking mostly north.  The smoke held off for the several hours that I was there...I drove around a part of the rim and then came back to the lodge area to look around at the concessions and have lunch.  After that, it was out of the area north to Road 138 which took me west back to Interstate 5 in Roseburg.  Then it was on to Portland; I got to Vicki's house in the evening.

As it turned out, Stacey and the girls were out for a summer vacation in Oregon at the same time:

Last Revised: 7 September 2002
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