Going Back to Mendocino

A vineyard that we were parked next to in Ukiah

We left Coarsegold on Sunday, April 27, and started working our way north. We met Pat, who had spent the night at her daughter's place in Patterson, at the Flying J outside of Lodi. We got a bit over 40 gallons of diesel and spent around $175 for it! Thankfully that will get us to Mendocino and beyond but it's still hard to take.

We spent Sunday night at Cache Creek Casino near Woodland, CA. This is a huge "Las Vegas" style casino about thirty miles west of Woodland. We stayed in a flat part of one of the parking lots (which there are not very many of), but it was free. Since Cecile and I stayed pretty even playing the slots, it stayed even. Pat, unfortunately, didn't fare so well. We did have a nice meal at the Vietnamese restaurant in the casino. We ended up driving about 200 miles this day.

Monday morning we headed out on Highway 16 and made our way to Highway 20, which goes along the north shore of Clear Lake. The traffic was pretty heavy due it being diverted from elsewhere because of heavy construction. It was pretty uneventful except for the truck that decided to use his vehicle as a weapon on the road. He ended up passing me on a double yellow line and then, for no apparent reason, slammed on his brakes to prove some unknown point. He was probably some hot-headed young (20's or 30's) kid that was frustrated with the heavy traffic. Anyway, he very nearly caused a massive accident involving a lot of people. Unfortunately I didn't get the license number as I was too busy trying to avoid him and the guard rail.

But we ended up making it safe and sound to Highway 101 and stopped for the day at Shodaki Casino just north of Ukiah. This is a small casino but they are in the process of building a much larger permanent building. They are in the process of working on the foundation right now and probably won't be done with their new building until early next year. Pat decided not to gamble here but Cecile and I were able to make a little money and so didn't contribute to their building fund. We drove about 110 miles today.

We left on Tuesday morning, heading up 101 to Willits and then taking the slow trip across Highway 20 and the coast range towards Fort Bragg. The traffic was surprisingly light as I only ended up having to pull over in the turnouts about six times. We made it to our little campground under the trees around 11:00am. Nothing much had changed with the exception of another couple big trees which had fallen over the winter. We drove about 60 miles today.