Pacific Northwest (PNW) Road Trip, Day 1: SF, CA -> Anderson, CA - 224 mi
After a hearty meal of salad, fried talapia fillet, and chicken nuggets Liz and I set out from San Francisco on our road trip. We decided to go the “long way” around the bay across the Golden Gate Bridge and then around the north side of the bay instead of taking the Bay Bridge and I-80 because traffic looked pretty bad on I-80 according to google maps. A quick drive across the city and we were over the bridge without a problem. That is until somewhere on route 37 when my car decided it no longer liked to be in 4th gear on the highway.
Luckily for us, third gear worked just fine!
We actually got off the highway shortly after the transmission trouble began and I discovered that if you shut the car off for a minute and then started up again the cars computer reset and, if driven carefully, would shift into and out of every gear without a hitch. That is until someone cuts in front of you, or you hit a hill, or otherwise have to alternately ease up and then press the accelerator.
We went through the stop, turn off car, wait, turn on car, go cycle three or four times on the first night out of town. It was very nerve-racking and both of us had the unspoken thought that we wouldn’t even get to our first destination before having to cut our trip short.
But that didn’t happen. Instead we were able to get to the Gaia Shasta Hotel in Anderson, CA in pretty good time without hitting any significant traffic. Other than the potentially catastrophic transmission issues it was a pretty good drive!
The Gaia Shasta Hotel turned out to be pretty nice. It had 3 “pods” with 12-15 or so rooms each around a central courtyard area that had a nice rock garden. Outside in the back was a really big pond with a pair of white and a pair of black swans swimming. Around the pond was more rock garden and there was a bridge between the hotel and the restaurant next door. The hotels design and philosophy is to be as green as possible, and they obviously want to encourage that. Our room had an abridged version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” so you can catch up on all the scary results of future global warming. Oh, and the continental breakfast next door was really nice as well with Kaishi cerials, organic bagels, lots of fruit, coffee, teas, muffins, etc. If you find yourself near Redding, CA, head 10 minutes farther south and stay at Gaia. It’s cheap, nice, and green(er).