Ashland, Our favorite place ever!

Okay no its not.

The Passes Story

So on the first day of our trip, we made it all the way to Grants Pass. It was a long tough drive, in a slow as molasseses truck, but we were so relieved to get to our destination. We stayed in a little Best Western in Grants Pass, and then had breakfast at an Elmers before heading out again early in the morning. San Francisco was about 8 hours away at the rate we were driving and we wanted to make it in before 6 otherwise we couldn’t get the keys to our apartment that day.

So off we go, and we get about 40 miles south to Ashland, and we hear that chains are required to get over the pass. We stop, pull over at a gas station and inquire about chains, at some point we go into their office at the gas station and see that the pass is solid white. So much snow is coming down you can’t tell what your even looking at. Not the ideal conditions for our Budget truck that we told wasn’t even supposed to be chained. On top of that, chains are quoted to us around 150 bucks. YUK!

We head to Ashland, and hang out, hoping it gets better, we decide we can’t hang in the budget truck for who knows how long, so we get another Hotel room. (Its fun seeing Gracie explore new hotel rooms). We head out, and find all the splendors of Ashland.

Ashland has a very nice downtown area, its got some good restaurants, some small snack shops, a cool creek area, and a few touristy shops. After wandering around in the rain seeing the tourist shops, we decide to see a movie, and see Juno. Great movie.

Throughout the day we’ve been going to the Hotel lobby to use their internet to see the situation of the pass, it was getting worse and worse. So much snow was coming down, they closed the pass and weren’t allowing anyone through. (Thank god we weren’t stuck up there, or in line somewhere, YUK!)

At this point, we don’t know what to do. It could be days maybe a week before the pass is good enough again for our truck. I’m supposed to be at work in like 6 days. Danielle freaks out, I play it wild and just decide we go if it opens back up.

Next morning, we go and have breakfast at a place called Brothers. Very nice, got an omlette I think, or something healthy, as I was sick I didn’t get to partake in the pancakes I always yearn for.

After that, we check the pass and amazingly its open, chains still required to be carried though. There were some tense times here, both of us thinking we might die if we do this, but knowing there isn’t a lot of options. So we go to the gas station, throw down 170 bucks for chains (for the truck, the trailer and the car on the trailer, what a rip).

Off we go. Here’s a picture of what it looked like intially.

I know it doesn’t seem like much, but that wall of to our right was as tall as our cab. And the first pass was very steep, we basically climbed 4000 feet in a few miles then went straight down again.

Jubilation ensued, it was very pretty, and we felt we had conquered the worst of it. Yet of course, if you look at that map above, we were still over 100 miles from Mt Shasta, and that was much worse. A lot of it was going up very steep hills, then down very steep hills, neither of which our truck loved to do. The Semi’s kept flying past at amazing speeds, and I didn’t want to scare my poor girlfriend any more then was, so we just kept truckin along at the slow and steady pace.

Thankfully, we only saw about 2 minutes of snow fall and it was really light, we are so glad those Department of Transit people are so darn good, we didn’t even end up putting our chains on, they are still in the trunk of my Acura.

The only advice I got for all of you. Don’t move in January! Ugh it was bad.

Here’s the rest of the pictures we have from the pass.