Drove to Portland today from Mt. Shasta

If conditions are okay you can make it within 6 hours to Portland from Mt. Shasta. Mostly the conditions were okay. When I left Shasta it hadn't rained there yet but looked like it would soon. It says on my IPhone that it only made it to 63 today in Mt. Shasta with a low of 38 tonight in the city. On the mountain anywhere it is sure to be much colder than that. tomorrow it says a high of 55 and a low of 31 which are more normal temperatures for this time of year actually. Yesterday I helped a friend rake up oak leaves (he has about 7 or 8 trashcans full that he starts fires in his wood stove with which is what he heats his house with when he is there because it is much less expensive than anything else and he likes to sit by the fire when it's cold outside along with his girlfriend. People in the mountains burn Oak and pine and cedar and fir but Oak and pine are likely the best as long as you watch out for flue fires if you burn oak. So, unless you put some tire chains down your chimney and clean out the pine tar it can catch fire in your chimney and create a chimney or flue fire which can set your home on fire if you don't understand this well. So, often people choose not to burn pine much and burn Manzinita burls (which put off a tremendous amount of heat when they coal by the way) but have a strange smell to them which some people don't like. Then there is Fir often called "Piss Fir" because it smells when you burn fir like someone is peeing nearby so they call it "piss fir".

But, in the mountains it is so much cheaper to get a permit from the forest service and gather dead or down wood for not much and go get your own wood than to pay for utility bills for heating your home in the winter otherwise. So, many people still do this where it is still allowed more remote in the mountains in little cities still.

Any way, I woke up about 8:30 and had slept well and took off for Portland about 9 AM so I was in Ashland by 10 or 10:30 which was good. So, by 3 something I was in Portland and had checked into my room. The room they gave me smelled like smoke and mold and so I had them change my room because that wasn't going to work for me and they put me in a recently refurbished section of the hotel which was about 10 times nicer than the other one. Since My wife flies up here in a few days to join me visiting our kids for Halloween it's good I changed rooms. It will be much healthier for me and besides this room has a nice view and is up a couple of floors too which is nice.