Day 29

 

 July 15 - Shasta Lake RV Park and Resort (Lakehead, CA) 

Evelyn woke up this morning with a fever…

We packed up camp last night so we could roll early in the morning, and we woke up at 8am - when I was hoping to leave. I started breaking down the tent while Cassandra made breakfast, and Evelyn woke with a 100.3 fever and was all stuffed up. Of course, my first thought was covid, but there wasn't much for any of us to do now - just wait and see. 

I was, unfortunately, short and frustrated with her as I stomped around the campsite packing up - I felt like she could have avoided this if she took a bit better care of herself, eating better and sleeping earlier these past several days (in hindsight, I regret these feelings and am happy I had Cassandra around to keep me in check).

We eventually got on the road, heading south and east: finally beginning our journey back eastward! We decided last night that, after learning that Matt had contracted (and was sick with) covid, returning to Oregon was not going to be in the cards for us (since our primary incentive was to get back with our friends), so we chose to start slowly moving our way toward Donner Memorial State Park over these next few days. Originally, we planned to drive the 430+ mile drive from harbinger farm to Donner Memorial, and now having driven a few legs of that distance on this trip so far, we were now happy to avoid another beast of a travel day. Using our atlas, we found a campground in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest that was practically half-way between Del Norte and Donner: Antlers Campground. This spot was about 30 minutes north of Redding, CA, where River and her family were from (and 30 minutes south from Mt. Shasta), so we thought this would be a perfect place to settle down before getting back on track of our itinerary. Additionally, we were excited for our first national forest camping experience.

Tilda started getting carsick pretty early on the drive and wounded up throwing up four times on the drive. Already on a short fuse, I got frustrated with Tilda as I felt she wasn't using all her strategies for avoiding carsickness (opening the window, taking deep breaths, keeping her eyes outside the car, etc.) - and we had some unsightly mess to clean up (in hindsight, I regret these feelings because Cassandra and I noticed a correlation between Tilda eating her first meal of the day on the road and carsickness).

Once she got her stomach-feelings under control, we enjoyed a beautifully scenic drive down the Pacific coast along Rt. 101. Some of the shorelines seemed other-worldly with huge boulders and broad beaches; we saw surfers from afar and would have loved to just park and stay at so many places along the way. We turned eastward outside Arcata, CA, then navigated winding mountain roads along Rt. 299 through the Six Rivers National Forest. We gassed up about an hour outside Redding, and a local started chatting with me about our camper and our trip while Cassandra and the children were using the restroom. When I told him where we were going, he told us that there was nothing to see in Redding and that, if we could manage an extra couple hours, we should consider passing through Redding and head to Lassen Volcanic National Park to avoid the heat and do some fun adventuring. While thankful for his advice, we planned to have our car serviced while near Redding (since it was due for an oil change and we wanted to use a Subaru dealership for it - not to mention, Subie brought us this far and deserved all the love we could offer) so I pocketed that advice for the moment. 

We pulled into a largely-vacant Antlers campground in a blaringly sunny, 100-degree early afternoon. On paper, it looked somewhat welcoming, like this:

...but we arrived to a largely dry, barren, and empty landscape.

We were not expecting this stark change in weather from the cozy, refreshing climate of the redwoods - there was little respite from the heat in the shade, and this campground had no electricity, so no airconditioning - just a fan blowing around stifling air in the camper. Our plan was to park the camper and then I would travel back to Redding to get the car serviced. We quickly unhitched the camper and I speedily (still holding frustration) drove to the dealership, leaving Cassandra and the children behind at the campsite to set up.

Fortunately, Redding Subaru worked incredibly efficiently, and I was in and out of there as quick as could be. While waiting, I stepped outside (in the 104-degree weather!) to check in on Cassandra and the children, and we discerned that, given the way everyone was feeling combined with the lack of amenities and oppressive heat, we needed to find another option for the evening and overnight - so I did some research and found an RV "resort" not far from Antlers Campground that advertised hookups, a pool, and laundry facilities: this was exactly the kind of comforts we were looking for! 

I arrived back at Antlers Campground to the crew trying their best (yet failing) to cool off…

 

We quickly threw everything back into the camper and headed to Shasta Lake RV Resort not 10 minutes from Antlers. As it turned out, the drought and wild fires had disrupted everything around there: the pool was closed and the laundry was not functioning because there wasn't enough water - the campground attendant openly expressed concern about their immediate viability, which was unsettling. However, we weren't going anywhere else - we had electricity (therefore, air-conditioning) and wifi, so we decided to hunker down for the evening, give ourselves some rest, and figure out our next move tomorrow (we couldn't imagine staying here any longer than a night). We watched the Bob's Burgers movie (which we likely should have reconsidered for age-appropriateness…), ate a simple dinner, then went to bed.

 

They had some ice cream novelties in the camp store as well - they shopped all by themselves.

This was most certainly the toughest day on this trip so far (perhaps our toughest travel day in all our camping adventures, ever!), and we were so happy to have it behind us as Cassandra and I settled into our tent for the warm evening. This entire region feels so sad and oppressive, and we knew it wouldn't do us much good to remain here much longer. While in Redding, one of the Subaru-attendants spoke to me about the wildfires that were burning about 8 miles north of the city - we were the closest we'd been to yet of wildfires, which was unsettling (even though the locals seemed to live with the threat comfortably - and all the waterways and reservoirs we passed were depressingly dried up. Lake Shasta was so low cars were parked below the parking lot in the newly-exposed reservoir banks and the docks were completely dried up. Just a decade or two ago, I imagine this place was like paradise, but now seems to be waiting to dry up and disappear, transforming into rolling desert-land. They are experiencing the worst 22-year drought in the last two-thousands years and it is impossible to not be affected by it, even while passing through. Using a map to guide our journey (which featured lots of blue water-features), our expectations were shattered by the painful reality all around us.

Pray for northern California.