Homeward Bound - 7/18

We pulled outta Ashland midmorning (seems to be the norm for this trip) not entirely sure where we were headed. I was still flying high after the great performance of last night. We really did have great seats, especially appreciated when the rains began and we were dry! You got to hand it to the actors, they went right on without missing a beat. We headed south on 5 - quite a shock after just being on backroads for awhile. We decided to check out the town of McCloud, where my dad spent part of his childhood. The folks working in the museum were really wonderful and went out of their way to help me find clues to this bit of family history. My Big Papa (paternal grandfather) worked at the McCloud Box Factory. It's now closed, but hasn't been torn down - yet. Rumor has it that a water bottling plant might be setting up shop here. I called my dad a couple of times (yes, interrupted his golf game - oops) to ask him some questions. Unfortunately, he's a little fuzzy on the dates so it was difficult to look up some information. The cool thing is that the museum has hundreds of pictures available to go through. Really cool stuff in there, too. (Another note to myself, contact my cousin Frankie and see if he can provide some of the missing links). I was hoping to find the house my dad grew up in, but instead settled on taking pictures of the church, general store and dairy barn. It began drizzling again - and we hadn't yet eaten lunch - so we headed toward the Lassen area (backroads again - I couldn't do anymore on highway 5) and pulled off at a vista point. The rains really began now - so we put up the table and had a picnic lunch inside the WinnieMobile. It was really fun! We still hadn't a clue what our plans were, so continued driving through the Lassen National Forest. At about 4ish, we decided to pull off into a US Forest campground. We popped the top and were ready to settle in for the night. We were the only ones in the campground, but weren't really able to go out and explore due to the rain. So, we just hung out listening to the audio tape given to Ned by Patti & James. It's called the "Kite Runner". Absolutely fascinating story about a "coming of age" young Afghan boy. We lied around for a couple of hours then finally decided - what the heck - let's just head on home. I was a little sad to be going back already. I've had soooo much fun on this trip!! However, on the way back the clouds parted, the sun peeked through and we saw a great rainbow. I figured that was a pretty good omen. I've got a ton of stuff I want to research from this trip (from Fugo balloons to Oregon Christmas tree production) and I've already begun planning our next trip...The question is - shall we head for Yosemite or Vancouver?!