Alright! Today we leave the heat! Did not get a super-early start, because it’s a relatively short drive – only about 150 miles. Piece of cake! Well, once we get going. The problem is, it rained last night, and it rains when we wake up. Have you ever camped out and had to put away the tent in the rain? Yeah, except this is a GIGANTIC tent. But it’s still wet. Checkout time is eleven, so we can’t dilly-dally too much.

Short drive – true. Scenic drive – s l o w . Takes almost three hours, but the scenery is outstanding! Here are some shots of the drive:

A bit further down the road, we get this:

And even closer to McCall, we get this one:

And yes, it was still raining on the drive up. The curse is fully active!

Finally, we get to McCall, and head for Ponderosa State Park, where we’ll make our new home for the next few days. There is supposed to be a LOT of riding in this area, so hopefully we can make the most of it. After we check in, looking for our site, I see this:

It has been several decades since I’ve seen one of those! A VW Thing. Cool!

We get camp set up and head to town to check things out, then drive out a ways to see what there is. There is the lake (of course!), and a peninsula that pokes out into it, so I get a couple of shots of it. Here’s a panoramic view of the lake from the road North:

That peninsula looks kind of weird, so I get a close-up:

That’s basalt on that hillside. Old lava flows from at least yesterday (or maybe a few thousand years ago, I’m not really sure). I’ll try to get a closer look when I can.

We get some supplies in town, and head back to camp. Shower time! By the way, this park is BEAUTIFUL. Well, the RV section is, at least. Brand new driveways, perfectly paved, perfectly level, full hookups. Wow! Big bathrooms, clean, REALLY nice – ok, for a State Park. No soap at the sinks, though, which is a bummer. And big showers, too – individual rooms. Nice. So I go in to take a shower … ok, the showerhead is basically a pipe with a 1/8-inch hole on the end, where the water “sprays” from. It’s a pretty potent stream, feels like it’s coming out at 300 psi. Ok, I know it’s only probably 80 psi or so, but that teeny tiny stream just flat blasts the top few layers of your skin right off! AND, you need to run around in circles just to get yourself all wet. When the stream hits my neck, it almost makes the muscles cramp. It feels lie a deep-tissue massage, done by an old-time (1960s) East German masseuse who just slammed her fifth consecutive Red Bull since I walked in. In other words, it hurts! But it’s warm, and I’m clean. Boy, you’d better watch where that stream hits you, though, at least if you ever hope to have children in the future. Vasectomy? Nah, this thing will give you a nut-ectomy if you’re not careful!