Day Two - Ashland, OR to Santa Rosa, CA
Another 367 miles down. If yesterday was all about endurance and the steady slog through long miles, today was just the opposite - lots of excitement. Amusingly, today's journey opened with Dean Martin singing "King of the Road" on the radio. The good weather continued to hold, but I was a little nervous to tackle the Siskiyou's this morning. It was cold out and the roads were a little bit icy; the stray water drops froze on the windshield as soon as I got up to speed. There wasn't any snow on the roads though and I didn't have to chain up so that was a bonus. Still, it was exciting coming over the last pass and down into California. I stopped to take a few pictures just over the pass - it really was beautiful.
After that the road opened up and it was smooth sailing. As I got deeper into northern California there were fewer semi trucks than there had been, though still a lot more than I'm used to seeing. The roads were a little rough in some places, but not bad and everyone was cruising along steadily.
By 12:30 pm I had stopped in Vacaville, just onto highway 80 for lunch. There was a little strip mall that looked like it had just been built last week and I wandered into Panera Bread for a sandwich. Nice place, very NorCal - organic, artisan, no trans fat, etc. Then it was back on the road to Santa Rosa.
Vacaville seemed to be the dividing line between a nice comfortable drive and total chaos. No sooner had I gotten back on highway 80 than it opened up into five lanes in either direction and there were suddenly hundreds of cars on the road. Where before everyone seemed content driving at five over the speed limit, suddenly everyone was flying past me at 80 plus mph. Welcome to California!
The last piece of excitement for the day, before pulling into Santa Rosa was on highway 37 where I witnessed my first ever incident of true road rage. One driver made a bad decision to change lanes at the last moment when there really wasn't enough time or distance for safety and cut another driver off. The second driver, clearly angry at being put at risk by the first, proceeded to pull around him and cut him off in turn, putting himself and at least ten other drivers back at risk. This was all done at 75+ mph and was honestly the scariest thing I've ever seen while driving. The second cutoff was so sudden and deliberate that I was certain we were all going to make the news in a bad way. Thankfully, a crash was avoided by mere inches and the two drivers sped off chasing each other down the highway. I ticked off the last few miles to Santa Rosa as my blood pressure ticked back down to normal.
Santa Rosa was actually a little bit out of the way for me, but Wendy and I have some good friends there, Mike and Amanda Visser, and I thought it would be a nice chance to visit and avoid another night at a hotel. They're great hosts and we had an enjoyable dinner at Graffiti, a tapas restaurant in Petalluma, with good food and great service. It was nice to have some company after two days of solitude. That wrapped up the day and after a restful sleep I'm ready for the last leg.
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