"Shasta Snow
Trip"
page 5
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Friday, 2-Feb-01, continued...
(approx. 3:30 p.m.)
So here we are, at our first real situation. Brian had pulled off to the side of the road to check out the scene and driven straight into some muck. Much to his chagrin, it was the real stuff, and his left tires had buried themselves in it....and the right side ones were not doin' so well, either. The scary thing was that the mud his bus appeared to be sinking into was part of the edge of a very steep incline leading down to Ruth Lake. It could have been a bad thing, had the embankment chosen that moment to break away! Here's Brian's bus, and a fortuitous shot of Stu and myself performing the "Dance of the Unstucken Bus" ceremony...
Aaron, in the meantime, had gone a little further down the road, and tried an access road down to the lake. He didn't get too far when he found that the surface was the same stuff Brian was dealing with....he was lucky to get out of there.
After an ill-fated attempt to pull Brian's bus out using my doublecab and some rotted tie-down straps, I busted out my collapsible snow shovel and Brian commenced digging while we rigged up the unbroken straps again. This next attempt got him further out of the mud, but still, one more was needed. It finally worked, and he broke free of the slime, but it was a bit tense for a moment when the front of his bus was swinging towards the edge, and the rear was stationary. But luck prevailed, and he got traction, while I sat there stupidly in the road, and when he blasted back out of the mud, he made solid bumper-to-bumper contact with my vehicle. Luckily, nothing was harmed on either bus.
OK, then! I guess we don't have time to stop for coffee and fish! So! On to Hayfork?
And so it was....We travelled over to Mad River Road, and up Hwy 36 to Hwy 3. There were some really major blocks of rock in the road around some of those corners, but we were able to evade them. We switched driving order...Babs took the wheel of the '66, and I took the lead. Aaron ran out of gas at one point, but then that's what that portable gas can is for, and I had to utilize my reserve tap (upon which I travelled 22 miles, not running out!), but we did finally make it to Hayfork at 5:15p.m., two hundred and nine miles since gassing up in Ukiah. Hayfork provided us with gas and food and coffee. Aaron took on the quest to find a payphone to call the motel in Mt. Shasta to confirm our reservations....the curator was not always very clear, and sometimes we were a little doubtful about his reliability, but it turned out well, and he had stayed up for us...nice guy....we got there a lot later than planned!
At Hayfork, where we spent at least an hour eating, getting gas, Brian went to work on his headlight which was not functioning, and we spent our collective time looking for payphones, watching a dogfight, enjoying the rabble-rousing locals partying on Friday night, and feeding a guinea pig. This is also where I determined that I had used almost a half a quart of oil, and poured half a quart in. Funny...it seemed to me for the rest of the trip that I was a half a quart high....at least my engine doesn't leak it or burn it! What a great feeling!
Eventually we moved out onto the darkened
roadway, and headed up through the mountains on Hwy 3 towards Weaverville. Basically
a long, dark paved highway, not a bunch happened, and no pictures that I know of came out.
We stopped in Trinity Center to allow me to call the motel for confirmations (we
really were paranoid, weren't we?), call Michele to say howdy and let her know everything
was still groovy, and to allow Brian to work on his sticking throttle (which he
"fixed" with a bungee) and to try to fix his headlight again. As an aside,
I find it somewhat amusing that Brian had two perfectly good, assembled headlight buckets
at his house, and he opted not to take at least one, considering that his headlight was
out before we left his house, and also that he specified that an extra headlight
would be good as a spare in case of deerstrike in his invitational email....no bad
feelings or anything Brian, I just find it ironic.... 
Anyway, while he was at work
on his light, Babs, Aaron and I noticed that the town seemed to be crawling with
Friday-night revelers. We also marveled at the way said revelers were not dressed
for the cold....this stop was probably the coldest experience of the entire trip! It
was all well and good, when one of those revelers decided to get a little friendly, and
that's when we had to split...
Yes, we were looking for Sasquatch!
er,
...however....
And on that note, Brian has a great idea for a trip early this Spring, to the area where "Bigfoot" was filmed......keep this in mind....the more the merrier! Stay tuned for updates on that and other future excursions!
Our route that night took us up Hwy 3 to Gazelle-Callahan Rd, quite a ways, if you look at a map....to Old 99 Highway, which deposited us on I5 South, near Weed. We then blasted through to Mt. Shasta....I was amazed at how I was able to accelerate up those long mountain stretches! Of course, Aaron, with his deep-breathing dual Weber-ized 1641 and tall tranny blew my doors off, but I was able to pass a semi with ease (better than that '81 Vanagon I had!), and I think Brian was having trouble with his throttle linkage again (not being able to achieve WOT), and perhaps the difference between single port (Brian's 1600), and dual port (my 1600) with the same gearing is more evident at higher altitude.
At 10:20p.m., we rolled into the Travel Inn in Mt. Shasta, procured our rooms, and sat around watching the video footage of the day. Later, Brian and Aaron went "out on the town", and then, the next thing you know, we're waking up to another day!
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