Flat Stanly(etta) Rides Again!

I had planned on driving from home (Kennewick WA) to Kay’s (Albany OR) on Saturday, with a stop-over for lunch in Portland with old friends. Well, as The Bard once said, “The best laid plans....”

I woke earlier than usual, and left home at 7 instead of 8, arriving in Portland, OR, an hour earlier than planned, but, nonetheless, had a delightful lunch with Jim and Shawn at our favorite hamburger place (McMeniman’s), and drove south to Kay’s with a moderately full, and very happy tummy.

It rained.

I arrived at Kay’s about 2.30pm, and she greeted me with the wonderful news that a huge storm was due to dump gobs of snow on the Siskiyou Mountain on Sunday (our planned day of leaving), which would last 3 days or so. We were both pretty well bummed out, and then decided to get a head start on the trip, and by 3.05 her stuff was loaded into the car, and we were on our way.

In the rain!

We stopped for dinner in Grant’s Pass, and decided to keep going. In the ever present and ubiquitous rain (It was Oregon, after all). Stopped for gas in Ashland, and debated whether or not to stop for the night, but decided, if it was going to dump over night, when predicted.... Well, we stayed over in Redding, and are now in Chico, where we’ll stay tonight, before heading in to Vacaville tomorrow afternoon.

The last time Kay and I did a really long road trip, we had two Flat Stanley’s and a Flat Camel that we took with us. I was feeling a little sad that we had no Flat Stanley to go along on our trip this time, and mentioned it to my sister of choice, Marjorie, who mentioned it to her grand daughter, Eliana, and the next thing I knew, a Flat Stanlietta had arrived in the mail to join us.

It was just to wet and nasty to take her out yesterday, but she rides well in her window ‘seat’ right behind the driver, where she can look out at all the scenery. Alas, she can see out much better than I can see in to photograph her, so I’m including a portrait taken with the scanner as well as a shot of her in the car.

Because of all the rain, which we didn’t get out of until we reached Red Bluff, we haven’t stopped to take any pictures, so there will be only these for this posting.

However, after we left Ashland last night, we did drive through rain, and wind, and snow. The snow was pretty thick, but wasn’t sticking, and after we got out of that, and back into the rain, we were quite glad we decided to leave yesterday afternoon instead of waiting until today to cross the mountains.

This is Flat Stanlietta with Wendy at the Motel 6 we stayed at in Redding. Very nice people, and a nice room.

Neither Kay nor I being big on early breakfast, we drove to Chico for breakfast, at 11.00. Not being at all familiar with Chico, we found another Motel 6, and then drove a bit, and saw The Cozy Diner. It was on the ‘right’ side of the street, on a corner with a light, so a left back out would be easy (very busy street), so we went in for a wonderful breakfast. Our very bad manners, we hadn’t asked Flat Stanlietta if she was hungry, and, obviously, she was – this is what Lauren, our waitress brought her – coffee with cream, toast, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, and a pulled pork sandwich with fries. Kay and I each got a bite.

After our brunch, we drove around a bit, found where my friend, Ray, lives. We’ll go see him tomorrow – then will drive down to Vacaville to see my cousin, Jim and his wife, Betty.







This is Tanya, the very friendly gal who helped us at the Chico Motel 6. Again, a clean and relatively quiet room, a working tv, ice machine down the way, and a bed each. For what more could we want?

For those of you not familiar with Flat Stanley, go to your favorite search engine and type in: Flat Stanley.

Since the weather is still pretty punk, and the lighting is flat as all get out, we’ll probably spend the rest in our room watching tv, napping, and reading or writing, or perhaps I’ll work on my quilt.

Kay just had the news on, and they said the storm we outran was seriously bad stuff, as serious as it can get, on the border between OR and CA in the Siskiyous, that it has been bad all day, and is scheduled to get worse before it gets better. We made the right decision in coming south last night instead of waiting like we’d originally planned.

We are on our way, and hope to see y'all soon!