Red Bluff, California

Good afternoon, my friends. We're one day closer to our month-long destination in Escondido, California. This afternoon, we find ourselves in Red Bluff...about an hour south of Redding, if that helps. We had a nice day's drive today with relatively good weather. Mike is happy because he washed both the truck and the RV before we left home, and both are still clean.

As we left Wolf Creek this morning, I got my own photo of the Wolf Creek Inn mentioned in yesterday's post. It's the oldest continuously-operating hotel in Oregon, having begun operation in the late 1800's.

From there we headed south. We were over hill and dale for the beginning of our drive. It didn't take long before Mt. McLoughlin came into view.

Mount McLoughlin is a dormant steep-sided stratovolcano, or composite volcano. Located in the Sky Lakes Wilderness, it is one of the volcanic peaks in the Cascade Volcanic Arc, within the High Cascades sector. It was named around 1838 after John McLoughlin, a Chief Factor for the Hudson's Bay Company. Mount McLoughlin's prominence has made it a landmark to Native Americans and others for thousands of years.

McLoughlin consists largely of basaltic andesite. It underwent three major eruptive periods before its last activity took place between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago. It is not currently monitored for activity or deformation. Diverse species of flora and fauna inhabit the area, which is subject to frequent snowfall and temperature variation between seasons. The Pacific Crest Trail skirts the eastern and northern sides and also accesses the only trail to the summit via the 6-mile McLoughlin Trail. 

Moving on, we found ourselves above the clouds. I always like seeing a view like this with islands in the sky.

There were a few rustic barns along our route. I captured these two when we stopped for fuel in Grants Pass, Oregon. Grants Pass is named for Ulysses S. Grant, and was named as a celebration for his victory at the battle of Vicksburg, during the civil war.

I caught this next one through the back window of our truck.

As we approached the Siskiyou summit, we began seeing snow along the roadside, but none on the road. We encountered only dry pavement. That's always a relief, as this is the "iffiest" part of the trip.

Crossing the summit, we caught our first glimpse of Mt. Shasta.

Soon, we left Oregon...bye-bye, Oregon. We'll be back. Don't worry.

And then it was Hello, California!

We encountered the produce inspection station shortly thereafter. I'd loaded all our fresh produce into an insulated bag, but there was no inspection today. We just drove on through. Nothing to see here, folks.

On down the road, we could get a better view of the "complex" of the Mt. Shasta volcano.

Here's what Wikipedia tells us about Mt. Shasta. You might notice is has two visible peaks on the larger mountain, and then another cinder cone to its right. Actually there are four vents there. Mount Shasta has two visible peaks because it's a compound stratovolcano, built up over time by eruptions from multiple vents, not just a single cone, with the main summit (Eastern) and the large western satellite cone, Shastina, forming during different eruptive periods, making it a complex of four overlapping cones. 

On down the road, we got a very pretty view.

Stopping at a rest area, I noticed these pyracantha berries. 

Continuing on, we caught our first view of Lake Shasta.

The level of the lake is down, but not as much as we've seen it at other times. Much of California depends on Lake Shasta for its drinking water.

As I'm writing this, Mike is outside making an adjustment to one of our large room slides. Bummer. We spent thousands of dollars having the slide repaired after our last trip in this RV. Not sure what happened, but the gears got our of sync, and so he's making some adjustments. He seems confident he can fix it, but it was the last thing he wanted to be doing after driving most of the day. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.

I've made some progress on my Christmas Miracle embroidery piece. I mostly filled my hoop this morning.

Now, I've moved my hoop to the right, and I'll start there next time I work on it.

We'll spend the rest of the evening relaxing, and then take off again in the morning. Tomorrow's end point will be Tracy, California. I don't know anything about Tracy. It's a place we usually just drive past. We're driving fewer miles per day this trip, and so we're staying in some places we've not stayed before.

The drive will be just slightly shorter, but you'll still want to get a good night's sleep. Have a good evening, everyone. We'll chat again when we get to Tracy.

Wolf Creek, Oregon

Good evening, my friends. Hey! I'm back! And I'm over 200 miles from where I was the last time we chatted. We left our home under dark and cloudy skies and drove through the fog until we reached the bottom of our hill. There, we found blue skies and sunshine. Mt. Hood did everything in its power to avoid having its picture taken, but I captured it anyway.

There isn't a lot to say about this drive south. We've done it many times. We see lots of barns.

We also see lots of birds of prey. The Willamette Valley touts itself as the "grass seed capital of the world." It probably is. Our climate is conducive to grass growing. There are plenty of field mice to entice the prey birds. We're also along the Pacific Flyway here, and so there are lots of birds.

We drove through periods of sunshine and periods of cloud cover and fog. When the sun finally did burst through the fog, it was dazzling.

The temperature was 40°F, so there was no concern about snow or ice. We did see some snowy patches at some of the higher elevations.

Just over 200 miles of traveling brought us to our first stop at this Josephine County park, Wolf Creek Park.

Wikipedia tells us there are a number of creeks in Oregon named Wolf Creek, after the wolves that were once abundant in the state. Wolf Creek post office was established 1882, while a railroad station called "Almaden" was located in the same place in 1883. The station was renamed to match the post office in 1888, and in 1895 the post office was renamed to "Wolf Creek" until 1951.

The pioneer-era "Six Bit House" was an inn located on the Applegate Trail that passed through the Wolf Creek area long before it had a post office. The original Six Bit House was probably built in 1853, near a hairpin turn of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The inn went through several incarnations until the present Wolf Creek Tavern was built in about 1883. The site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is now run by the Oregon State Parks and Recreation Department as the Wolf Creek Inn State Heritage Site and is the oldest continuously operating hotel in the state. You can see some photos of the interior right here.

Here's an image of the Wolf Creek Inn State Heritage Site I found in the public domain.

(image credit: "The front of Wolf Creek Inn" by Only in Oregon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

Along our route, we passed plenty of these signs designating the road we were traveling as a part of the "Applegate Trail."

Wikipedia tells us that The Applegate Trail was an emigrant trail through the present-day U.S. states of Idaho, Nevada, California, and Oregon used in the mid-19th century by emigrants on the American frontier. It was originally intended as a less dangerous alternative to the Oregon Trail by which to reach the Oregon Territory. Much of the route was coterminous with the California Trail.

The kitties were happy when we finally got parked and their treats could be dispensed. Treats make everything better.

Wolf Creek runs directly behind our site.

If I turn my body to the right just slightly, you can see the RV.

There's a more complete view of our site. It's nothing fancy here, and we're just spending the night. 

As I write this the kitties are already settling into their RV routine. Smitty was happy to find their window hammocks in working order.

So there's not much more to say about today. We'll cross the border into California tomorrow. We'll have to go through a checkpoint where they'll ask us about any fresh produce we have with us. I'm going to do as I did crossing the border back and forth into Canada. I'll keep all the fresh produce in an insulated bag with me, and that will discourage them from expecting to go inside the RV. Tomorrow will see us in Red Bluff, California...a drive of about 225 miles.

Just FYI, I'll blog whenever I can. With our Starlink system, we mostly have internet wherever we go. We're under the trees here, but we have a good cell phone signal, and so I can get online. And all of that to say that I'll usually be keeping up with my daily blogging schedule. If I miss a day here and there, it will be because I have no internet access.

Get a good night's sleep tonight, my friends. We have another long drive ahead of us tomorrow. 

Best of 2025

Good morning, my friends. I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas Day. Our son and daughter-in-law did the cooking for our family get-together, and it was delicious as always. (They are both excellent cooks.)

Before we headed over to their place, I took some time to bake Jumbo Breakfast Cookies for our trip. They're made with peanut butter, oatmeal, raisins and multi-grain Cheerios. We always carry Clif bars in the truck when we travel. They're filling enough to substitute for lunch on days when we don't want to stop. These are a nice alternative to Clif bars, and so we carry both.

Usually, I get 12 cookies from that recipe. For whatever reason, I eked out 14 this time around. It meant they were a little too crowded on the cookie sheets, and a few of them tried to unite into the jumbo-est of cookies. I just cut them apart with a spatula while they were still warm. They aren't beautiful, but they'll look even worse after we eat them.

With that finished, I took the first stitches on my newest embroidery project. I'm going to call this project "The Christmas Miracle." There's a lot of stitching here. It's going to take me a while.

Annoyingly to the kitties, they're confined to the indoors now. We don't want anyone to go missing right before we take off on a trip. This causes Sadie no end of consternation. It doesn't stop her from sitting by the door looking mad in her face.

So today is one of my favorite linky parties, hosted by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs. This is the 11th year of this annual party. Thank you for hosting, Cheryl. It's a great opportunity to look over the highs and lows of the year. We're asked to highlight our "best" 5 posts from 2025. From year to year I use different criteria to make my choices. This year's list is mainly my favorite posts over the past year.

If you're a regular reader, then you know this was kind of a big year for us here at the Three Cats Ranch. We celebrated 50 years of marriage with a visit to Alaska that completed our mission to visit all 50 states. We called it the Fifty-Fifty Trip, and it was quite an adventure. Here's a picture of us as we crossed the border into Alaska and completed our quest.

So here's my list of the best days of 2025:

1. Before we headed north, the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon, welcomed an adorable baby elephant, named Tula-Tu. Coincidentally, an art quilt group I belong to chose "Circus" as our prompt. Well. How could I do anything else but make a quilt featuring Tula-Tu? 

Of course, she's a zoo elephant, but with the right fabrics and a little bit of creativity in the background, I could turn her into a circus elephant. Pictured above is my quilt, "Tula-Tu Goes to the Circus." You can read my reveal post right here.

2. Next, I had a marvelous birthday back in May. I'd finished reading this book about some of heroes and folklore related to America's westward expansion.

It was an interesting story, and it did a good job of separating fact from fiction related to these men who helped bring law and order to our wild west. It was made more interesting when I discovered that Wyatt Earp's brother, Virgil Earp, was buried right here in Portland, Oregon, at one of our historic cemeteries. Well. This I had to see. So my son, Matthew, joined me for a lovely birthday visit to find Virgil Earp's grave, pictured below.

You can read my post about our visit right here.

3. Okay, and so we were just a few weeks away from the beginning of our journey to Alaska. We were there for a little more than two months. Knowing it would probably be our one and only trip to Alaska, we made the most of it. I'm sure we missed some noteworthy destinations, but we had a fabulous trip. 

We are long-time RVers, and so we took our truck camper and towed our Jeep Wrangler. When we reached Valdez, Alaska, we took a boat tour of  Kenai Fjords National Park. It was a cold and drizzly day, but well worth it. Among the wildlife we saw that day were these adorable sea otters. If I were a person with less restraint, I might have grabbed one of them up and brought it home for a pet.

You can read my post about our boat tour right here.

4. On a different day, we visited several venues near Houston, Alaska. On a single day, we visited Matanuska Lakes Recreation Area, a garden at the Palmer, Alaska, visitor center, and a musk ox farm. While there, we learned that wild musk oxen were a disaster or two away from extinction during the 1940's and 50's. A gentleman by the name of John Teal started what came to be known as the Musk Ox Project in Alaska. Supported by funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, as well as assistance from the University of Alaska and countless volunteers, the Project started Alaska’s first domestic musk ox farm in Fairbanks in 1964. Here's one of the musk ox we saw during our visit.

Their fur is spun into beautiful and expensive yarn. This turned out to be an interesting place. You can read my post about it right here.

5. Finally, we weren't at all sure we were going to be able to reach this venue at Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark. We'd been warned that it would require a long drive over a notoriously bad road. This was one of the things I most wanted to see in Alaska. I was prepared to be disappointed, but the road was not nearly as treacherous as we'd been led to believe. Of the 62-mile stretch, about 20 miles were in chipseal. The remainder was gravel, but well-graded. In all but just a few stretches, we were able to drive the posted speed limit of 35 mph. We made it to the end of the road in about 2 hours. 

This turned out to be what is known as a "company town." I'd heard that term may times, but this historic landmark really gave us a feeling for what it meant to live and work in such a place. If you're my age, you can remember the song, "16 Tons," sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford. The refrain goes like this:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store.

(If you're curious, you can listen to the song at that link I've given you.) 

As we approached, it looked like this:

You can read my post about Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark right here.

So that was a wonderful trip, and it's been a good year all in all. We'll be heading out again in just a few days, this time to warmer and drier climes. We'll be visiting dear friends and doing some more sight-seeing. With so much going on over the next few days, I'm going to take a break from blogging after today. You can look for me down the road no later than December 29th. Thanks for visiting today.

Merry Christmas!

Good morning, my friends. I hope you're ready for Christmas, because time's up! I still have one more baking project to do this morning, but that will be the end of my baking extravaganza for the year. The only other thing I need to make between now and the time we leave is some egg salad for sandwiches. I'll hold off on that for another day or two.

With a big windstorm headed our way, I went straight to work on my baking yesterday. I wanted to make sure it was all done in case we lost power. So I got busy baking some cookies. These are Chocolate-Chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Pecans and Dried Cherries. At the link I've given you, I used dried cranberries for the holiday season. You can also substitute white chocolate for the bittersweet.

These will be for snacking on our drive. I've been able to scale this recipe down to make it a cookies for two recipe. So, I made cookies for two to last us four days.

While those were baking, I went to work trying this new recipe for a no-bake Cranberry-Cookie Butter Cheesecake. Mine was scaled down by half to make it a cheesecake for two (or six). It wasn't hard to make, but it took a while to work through the steps. 

A crust is made from the ground up cookies, some melted butter, and some other seasonings. When the crust is formed into the pan, it goes into the freezer for at least an hour. Then the filling is made by first creating a sort of cranberry jelly. Some whipping cream was whipped into stiff peaks. Then, I made the cream cheese filling by mixing the cream cheese with some sugar and orange zest. The cream cheese mixture is divided in half. Half is mixed with the cookie paste, and half is mixed with the cranberry jelly. Then, the whipped cream is divided in half and added to the two cream cheese mixtures. Then, it's spooned into the frozen crust in two layers with the cranberry layer on top. Then...back into the refrigerator for a minimum of four hours. 

It looks pretty, and everything behaved as expected. I ended up with only half as much of the cranberry jelly that the recipe suggested, but I doubt it makes any difference. We won't eat this until New Year's Day. I'll freeze it between now and then. Of course, I'll report back and let you know how we liked it.

And then, after all that, I sat down to look at email and found this headline from our local newspaper.

So, the big scary windstorm we were promised never materialized. It was supposed to move through coming from the south to the north. I read a little later that high wind advisories had been canceled in Washington too. So...the storm that wasn't. I want my money back.

Okay, so I hadn't done any slow stitching yet, and it was lunch time. Smitty helped me finish off the last Tiny Treasure for this go-round.

I'm not exactly sure what this one is supposed to be. I'm going with Frankenfruit. This is Tiny Treasure #36. It has stem fill, satin stitch, and lazy daisy stitches.

These are the 12 just completed. I'm halfway through the group. 

Here are all the Tiny Treasures I have so far. (The one in the upper right is turned 90 degrees.)

The bird feeders were empty, and there was a break in the rain. I headed out to fill the bird feeders and found these daffodils popping up along the way. There was another grouping a little farther on.

It's always such a hopeful sign when the daffodils reappear. I have some new ones to enjoy this spring. Hopefully, they'll hold off blooming until we're home.

So, okay! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

We'll be heading off to Erik and Mae's this afternoon for our annual family feast. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody. The next two days will be the final push to get out the door and on our way south. I'll be back tomorrow with my "Best of 2025" post. Until then, have a wonderful day. I hope Santa is good to you this year.