Drove South to Mt. Shasta for Fourth of July and South to the California Coast on Sunday the 5th

 This is a long drive all the way from Porltand to the Northern California coast so Friday the 3rd we drove south From Eugene to Mt. Shasta. By leaving the night before at around 7 pm we could spend the night in Eugene and not have to deal with early morning Traffic because of people going south for the 4th Friday Morning. So, we whizzed right through to Mt. Shasta without having to worry about early morning traffic from Portland to Eugene.

Then we watched friends play music on a platform for the Runners and walkers of the annual 4th of July Walk Run in Mt. Shasta and then had dinner at my friends 2 1/2 acres in Mt. Shasta. We were tired from driving south from Portland so we let our friends go see the fireworks at Lake Siskiyou as we prepared to Drive south Sunday to the California Coast.

We tried to leave at 8 am but didn't get away until 9:30 am mostly because Starbucks kept my wife waiting about 1/2 hour and served other people before us because they were busy and confused because of the Weekend tourist rush after the walk run, parade and fireworks at lake Siskiyou the night before.

However, even with all of this delay we found that about 1/2 or less the normal amount of people and almost no Semi Trucks were on Interstate 5 heading south so we really didn't hit any serious traffic until we were about 1 hour from home on the coast which was good. I drove 1/2 the way and my wife drove the other half and we got home around 5 pm which is at least another hour later than a normal day driving south because of the traffic at the very end of the trip. So, it was almost 8 hours yesterday to drive from Mt. Shasta to the coast when usually it is around 7 hours on a non-holiday to do this. However, Fridays and Sundays can always be slower year around too sometimes.

There were no fires that we saw coming south which can be a problem around the 4th of July especially if people start them accidentally with Bottle Rockets and other fireworks so the fact that we didn't see any fires this year was good (or if there were any small ones they likely got put out in California at least.

So, this is good.