I have to be brief...low battery, little time, in short.....
Day started out splendid, but the State threw cold water on that, literally, by providing only cold showers.
Donner's sitting with Lynn Dykstra for his official portrait went extremely well. I already picked the photo that I want transferred to canvas for eternity.
The 40 mile drive from Vallejo to Sacramento was horrific. A parking lot the whole way. Apparently, San Francisco empties out on weekends to go to Lake Tahoe.
On the drive, a number of vehicles passed beeping their horns and giving me the thumbs up hand signals, for my rig obviously. At one point somebody driving an old Jeep Cherokee beeped his horn and passed me rather fast and close and I knew it wasn't to compliment me on my rig, but to criticize my slow driving. So, I returned his honk with a thumbs up, pretending that I thought he was complimenting me on my rig. The driver obviously got angry at the fact that I misunderstood him and so as he quickly drove away he also gave a hand signal with one digit, and it was not his thumb. He was probably jealous of my license plate, JEEP.
At 430, we had to take a break for Donner so, since there are no rest stops on this route, we pulled I 80 into the Placer county seat. I must say that I have never seen a city with such convoluted streets. I clearly needed my Google Maps to get back on I80.
At 6 o'clock, I knew I would not be able to get to Donner Memorial Park and then a camp site until 7:45, so I asked Garmin for campsites near me and they indicated Donner Mine camp just eight miles away. It's not Donner Memorial, but it will have to do. So I followed Garmin's directions and pulled off the exit for the camp, but then I googled the camp and discovered that it was a music camp for youth. I inquired at a convenience store about local state camps and they directed me to Mineral Bar about six I was into the woods. Garmin had no idea at all where that was, but Google did. Google took me down some very narrow, heavily forested roads and at one point told me to turn right, which I did. Two miles later Google told me to make a U-turn, and then directed me right back 2 miles to where I should've turned left and not right, as Google directed. After a long winding, twisting, climbing and descending narrow road in the forest I came to the camp. It was already pretty dark so I really couldn't see much of the camp although it was small, only six campsites open, and empty, and it was near a bubbling running fork of the American River. I went through the evening's routine as usual and settled in to the tent at 8 o'clock, after having secured the camp from the Bears and raccoons known to populate the area. Before i went into the tent i scanned the flaslight around the forest and could see several sets of eyes glowing in the dark staring at me, waiting for me to retire. Hopefully, the racket i made scared than off.
