Take the long road home

Gathering steam. The browns give way to foliage as the Sacramento River twists in to view and the mountains rear up in front is us. The road turns to reveal the snot green sadly depleted Lake Shasta: Blair conducts an inspection. Brings to mind the dreadful Pruitt and his acolyte successor.

The boys press on and Mount Shasta appears in its triumph. FitzGerald tries to replicate the great Grand Canyon king of the world pic and looks instead like an escaped lunatic.Undeterred Blair wrestles him back into the car and pacifies him with some Beethoven piano concertos and the prospect of a right turn at Weed. However before that we grind to a halt and loose 40 minutes with road works but still marvel at the incredible skies.We resisted the predictable T shirts in Weed but followed the first sign for Bend and then Mt Shasta revealed itself – they say 25% odds of a major eruption in the next 30 years. How do they know?But who cares: drink in the beauty and compare to Fuji from a couple of weeks ago. The sound track has switched to Breakfast in America from Paris in 1979 – Supertramp.Meantime Ireland defeat Oz in the best of the rest final back at the 7s in SF!

Then we thought things had taken a turn for the worse….And then we saw the reason for the backup – a chilling memento mori.Doris, Butte Valley. In the words of Blair – breathtaking beauty and abject poverty. The bits of California the Democrats didn’t reach.