Thursday, September 3, 2009

1 Sep – Quincey, CA

Finally got my laundry done – no mean feat I tell you. Leaving Eureka you climb into the hills to the east that traps the sea fog in the town until eventually you look down on it. It made for quite an interesting picture. By mid day I had left the green hills and forest to enter the parched grassy flatlands around Redding and Chico. Much more interesting was entering Feather River Canyon which is the lowest pass through the Sierra Nevada. Much like the Manawatu gorge; road one side and rail line the other with a river in between. Except this one was around 70 miles long. Excellent road.

Western Pacific Rail Road built the track over a number of years prior to 1909 as their part of the Transcontinental Rail Road. It is still a working line and I was lucky enough to see a freight train winding its way round the bends. The train was quite long and I suspect very heavy (40 foot containers stacked two high) because the wheels protested loudly as they were dragged around the curves. There was an engine at the front and another at the rear belching huge amounts of smoke as they tried tto drag their load up the incline. The engine compartment of the front engine was so hot the oil and grease associated with the environment was at smoke point and me thought next step flash point. So I stopped and waited to see what would happen but the train stopped also so drama over – or so I thought. Seems it might have been the rear engine that caught fire. What ever happened it sure got the Forest Service activated – 6 trucks and a police car rushing to the scene. Just my luck -no picture.

I've sort of done a big loop and despite being on the road for the past three days and covered around 800 miles, I'm only a couple of hundred miles from where I started. Tomorrow I go through Reno again when it wasn't that long ago when Lildoc was buying Harley merchandise from the Casino HD outlet. I know because she shouted me an ice cream and I took a photo of her behind an elephants balls.


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