It was a pretty rough night sleep for me last night. For some reason, I was having super bad acid reflux, or whatever this darn problem is. At some point in time in the middle of the night, I ended up sliding my little body into the front seat and just trying to sleep in the front seat of the van.
It didn’t go so well, but I at least got some sleep, gratefully.
Poor mom had to get up a few times in the night I think, both for the bathroom and for leg cramps from not getting enough to drink.
So we got some gas, averaging about 15 and a half miles to the gallon, which is still pretty decent for this old beast. We passed through Reno, and then as we were driving i-80 West, mom asked if I wanted to stop off at Lake Tahoe. I actually had wanted to, but I didn’t really say anything because we were trying to get to Sacramento by a certain time, but we were already going to miss that, so it turned out perfectly that we could swing by and enjoy ourselves a little bit at Lake Tahoe.
We spent the $10 for the parking pass at the beach front parking lot, used the little porta potties, and then spent probably a little over an hour on the beach just enjoying the wind and the beautiful views.
They also had a place for us to fill up our water bottles, which was nice. 🙂
Oh, I forgot to mention that when we left winamaca this morning, I noticed that we were low on coolant, for some reason. So we’re either leaking it or burning it somewhere. I guess we’ll see how it goes the rest of the trip. 🤞
Anyway, so we had a good little time at Lake Tahoe, and I went for a bit of a polar plunge, enjoying the very cold, but also very refreshing water. The lake definitely was clear like they say. I think all the way out to my chest, I could still see the bottom. Beautiful lake.
I enjoy the ocean, for sure, but I’m always worried about sharks, and I don’t like being sticky after I dry off. I’ll certainly take an ocean over no ocean, but if I can have a big fresh water body of water, a big lake or river, those are my favorites.
After that we headed west on i-80 through Donner pass. Just as we were coming up on Donner Lake, there was an accident, with the traffic backed up to a complete stand still. Google knew about it before we did, so it had funneled us off to a frontage road in one of the little mountain towns right before the lake, but then it was going to put us right back on the freeway where it was still a complete standstill.
Instead of doing that, we decided to take the road that goes along the shore of Donner Lake, so we drove down into The Little lakeside community and along the road that just follows the lake all the way. It’s also a beautiful lake, I’ll be at a good bit smaller than Tahoe.
Anyway, when we got to the end of the lake, there were switchbacks in the road to go back up to the freeway, so we took the road back up to the freeway, looped around and back westbound far enough ahead of the accident that it seemed pretty clear to me that everyone was still at a standstill because there were only just a few cars on the road which I’m guessing happened to be traffic that entered the freeway after the place on the freeway where traffic had been shut down.
Supposedly, the little detour we took was going to get us to where we were going at exactly the same time as just waiting in traffic, but given what I saw once we got back to the freeway, I’m guessing those people stuck in the dead standstill we’re probably there for a heck of a lot longer.
And either way, I would much rather be moving with a beautiful view, then stuck bumper to bumper on the highway.
We got gas in yuba City, gratefully for $5.09 a gallon, which was a lot better than the $5.69 a gallon, or whatever it was, just a couple blocks away.
Definitely pricey out here. 😶
As we were getting close to Rebecca’s house, I heard a car honk behind me in the honk a gazillion times as it passed me, which meant that I knew it was Rebecca. I saw her she drove by, and we followed her most of the rest of the way to her house, until she ducked into the grocery store, and we continued on to her house.
We spent the evening catching up a bit. I spent a good little while chatting with Zach, and then we had a good little chat with Rebecca and James before we all crashed for the night.
Mom stayed in their spare bedroom, and I preferred to be out in the van, So I went out to the van, got myself all squared away, and crashed.
I guess I should probably say that I spent a little while trying to pray in the way that I want to pray. That might sound a little odd, but trying to apply what I feel like I understand about prayer is not as easy as just changing the words you’re saying: there’s a lot of thought and pondering that goes into it.
Anyway, that was the day, and that was the night, and I was off to Dreamland.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 