The Run Home

So we decided to head home, and set out departure day for Friday. Our friends decided to cut and run on Wednesday, so we had a couple of days alone in our rented Desert Hot Springs mobile home.

We had all the leftovers from both kitchens so we pretty much went into full self-isolation for those two days.

The park was pretty much a ghost town. People were around, we just didn’t see them.

We used the hot-water swimming pool, Helen did her yoga every day, and I went for lonely desert runs.

Thursday we packed to get an early start in the wee small hours of Friday morning.

I went wild, and took the car out and gassed it up.

The original plan was to get going before dawn, and to reach our reserved hotel room in Yreka, California by around supper time. The expectation was that the drive would take us 11 or 12 hours, well beyond our usual absolute maximum of 8. We are old, after all.

The following day would see us bunking down in a hotel in Portland, just inside the northern edge of Oregon. Washington state is one of the Corona hotspots, so we planned on zipping through without stopping at all just be on the safe side.

That would mean that both days 2 and 3 would be about 6 hours of driving each. We had no idea what kind of crowds and procedures and delay there would be at the Canadian border.

Our first day’s route took us along the northernmost LA freeway to the west. We were underway at 5:48am. By the time we reached our closest point to LA itself, we were in the height of rush hour.

Except there was none at all. Traffic volume was what the freeways were originally designed for, and things never bogged down, or even slowed at all.

The only interesting characteristic was that everybody was going fast; much faster than normal, even for clear roads. It was as if everybody had decided to ignore the posted speeds, and to stick to the highest on any stretch (70 mph), and to go 10% faster than that.

This was how the conservative drivers were going it. Of course, there were a significant number of real speed demons. What was totally missing was anybody plodding long at the real speed limits, nobody at all.

At first, I thought this was just LA traffic scampering gleefully on their freakishly free roads, but it turned out to be that way for our entire trip, me included.

So we merged onto Interstate 5 and swung north, and kept cranking off the miles.

Our lovely car can go about 850 km between refuelings, so we knew we’d have to stop once on our first leg. We also took one rest stop break. To make this possible neither of us was drinking. Usually, sipping away on a Dr Pepper while driving is one of my simple pleasures. Not on this trip. There would be limited rest stops.

When we did stop, I would use a disinfecting cloth to clean my hands, and anything else that touched anything. We ate our own pre-packed food, picking up nothing along the way.

The scenery was grand, and with so little traffic, I could actually look once in a while. Don’t worry; the car has adaptive cruise control and lane alert features.

The first huge day of diving took us north of LA, through Stockton and Sacramento, and many smaller places.

Our first night’s hotel was a Super 8 in Yreka California. There were only about a half dozen cars staying there overnight.

They still provided a breakfast the next day, but all I had was coffee, and a bunch of sweet breakfast pastries that came pre-sealed from some factory.

We got going about 7:30am, and again I was the driver. Usually we share, but not on this trip.

We headed north again, through mountains, and into Oregon. We weren’t rushing, as our planned stop was only in Portland, only about 6 hours away. There was no need to dawdle either, so I kept our speed parallel to the other drivers, who were all still driving fast.

After a couple of hours, our speed and lack of stops had our gps showing a crazy early arrival at our booked hotel. Helen looked up the Canadian border wait times, and they were only a few minutes at every crossing. She suggested that we just push on and run all the way home.

I agreed. It was too late to cancel the hotel booking, but we’d rather get home a day early.

Traffic remained sparse and fast. The usual two logjams are the freeway tangles around Portland and Seattle. We zipped right through as if we were the last people on earth.

We hit the border at 5pm. There was only one booth open out of a potential of 12. There was a single car ahead of us, and they pulled away as soon as we drove up. No wait at all.

The customs agent didn’t ask about what we’d bought, which is their usual concern. She just asked if either of us had been having any respiratory symptoms, gave us an information sheet, and welcomed us home.

Once across, I made myself adapt totally to Canadian speeds. The usual setting for our cruise control on this drive had been 119 kph, and now the freeway limit was 90. In places the limit was 80.

The roads were still pretty empty. We got the the ferry terminal at about 6:30pm, and our boat wasn’t until 7:50pm. We hung out in our car both in the parking lot, and while onboard.

Helen drove the last few miles from the ferry to our home, and into self-quarantine we went.