On Jan. 3 we left Albuquerque at about 5:30 AM following a less than restful night. The sunrise (hadn't seen one of those in a while!) over the high desert was gorgeous. I enjoyed the drive through NM and AZ — it's alien and strangely beautiful but I cannot imagine living there. By now we were learning of the winter storms hitting California, via NPR (our on the road companion) and weather.com on my Blackberry, and were beginning to get concerned about getting stuck somewhere. I foolishly thought that by going the I-40/I-5 route we would avoid bad weather and be out of danger once we got through Flagstaff (which was clear, BTW). My ignorance of California/Southern Oregon geography came back to bite me. I didn't realize the mountains there would pose a weather challenge.
We had originally planned to meet up with my friend Elizabeth, who was planning to meet us in beautiful Barstow. With the weather reports getting more threatening all the time, we decided to stay on the road rather than stopping in Barstow. Liz will just have to come to Oregon now! We pressed on, across the Mojave to Bakersfield, which is without doubt the worst-smelling place I've ever been. It's like being smack-dab in the middle of a feedlot for miles on end. We were almost gagging, what with the odor and the never-ending Iowa primary coverage. The smell lingered until we were nearly to Fresno, where we picked up beer and snacks at a gas station, checked into the pet-friendly Super 8 (OK, I mentioned i had cats, I just didn't specify 5 cats – there's such a thing as over-sharing.) We spent 17 hours on the road on Day 2, and I have to say the kitties were very quiet, but they were definitely as glad to get out of the carriers at the end of the day as we were to get out of the car.
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