Heading West in Search of Warmer, Sunny Weather

The weather is supposed to again be cold and rainy in the Reno/Tahoe area, so we're tired of being stuck in the truck and trailer and decide to travel to a part of the country where it's warm and dry. We're tired of hearing about the weird (40 degrees colder than last week; and rain in the desert) weather. So we leave the Lake Tahoe area earlier than planned, and then instead of heading north as planned we head west to the warm central valley of California.

We travel across the Sierra Nevada Mountains through the famous Donner Pass. It's cold and rainy at the summit.

We're not really sure where we want to go today. We just know we want to find someplace where the weather is warm and dry enough to enjoy some outdoor activities. We assume that California will have a Welcome Center on Interstate 80 soon after we come into the state so we can decide where to go. Wrong....no Welcome Center. However, they do have an Agriculture Inspection Station. We expect this type of inspection when we travel between Canada and U.S. but not into one of the states.

So they ask us to get out and unlock the trailer for an inspection. The inspector looks around the inside of the trailer, including the fridge, sink and cabinets. Then look in our outside compartments. We think things are going well, but then they tell us that since we're from Pennsylvania we need to pull the trailer over to the side for a gypsy moth inspection. They take about 15 minutes examining all the outside nooks and crannies of our trailer, including taking a flashlight and examining the bottom of the trailer. No gypsy moth eggs. So they give us a paper saying we passed their gypsy moth inspection and let us go on our way.

We get to the central valley of California and it's warm and sunny. Yea! We stop at a nice RV park in Red Bluff and enjoy a nice warm evening. Then around 9pm it starts to rain. Ugh.