I always find it interesting the way the topography changes as the miles drift by. Sometimes the changes are gradual and other times they are quite abrupt. With eyes glued to the road in the rain, it is a pleasure when it clears up a bit and you can see beyond the mist thrown up by the truck in front of you.
Close to Weed, California, (what does it say when they name a town after a noxious plant) the snow was quite evident and we even saw small patches of it in the ditches. We passed numerous warning signs such as this one, as well as large overhead read-a-boards but they all remained unlit and that was fine with us.
We stopped at most Rest Stops and took a quick stroll before getting back in the car for more driving. We find this helpful to reduce fatigue in the body as well as in the mind. The USA has a good network of these stops and they are a vital safety feature. We noticed that a few of them were closed, blocked off. We made some inquiries and found that it was due to state funding cuts. California is on the verge of bankruptcy and they cut back where they can. The new governor, Jerry Brown, is tackling the deficit by taking the bus to his new offices. That should work.
In a few years, the pot holes in the freeway, which were just starting in many places, will be hazards. Many places where we stopped had very much evidence of hard times. There were even people begging at some of these rest stops, something we had never encountered before.
Lake Shasta, always a jewel. We have seen the water level much lower than this, so we can see why the rain was welcome here. There was a very large construction project on the highway here, building a bridge over an arm of the lake. It was one of the few new projects we saw anywhere.
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