Traveling through another dimension

“This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable...Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. . .
Next stop The Twilight Zone.” - Rod Serling

Imagine, if you will, a couple and their furry companions as they make their journey from a land of millions of peoples to a land of millions of trees. They, like thousands of other young couples on vacation, are enjoying the trip and company. Witness as a seemingly innocent journey encounters a twisted series of events as they make their way into the Twilight Zone:

Yesterday was one of the most terrifying times that I have ever encountered. We drove from Anaheim to a tiny town called  Trinity Center, California. It is a tiny town northwest of Redding. The day was already taking longer than I had calculated, but the cats had settled down after our stop at a rest area. I had directions on how to get to our campground Trinity Lake KOA that I had printed from our reservation, but of course, had also put the address into the GPS of the truck. As we got closer to Redding, Jason and I debated on whether we should follow the directions I had printed or the GPS directions. We decided that whenever we had NOT listened to Lola (the GPS), we always had problems. So, we decided that we should listen to her this time. 

Well, that turned out to be a mistake. Lola had us turn and drive through a small town called French Gulch. We had a bad feeling already because the road seemed fairly small, but we figured that it would get better past the town. The road then turned into East Side Road, which, now that we have looked at on the map, is a tiny forest service type road that follows a mountain ridge up and around the east side of lake Trinity. If you have even been out in the wilderness and taken one of those obscure roads then you get the idea. Or if you have an atlas, go look it up. I tried to get a good google maps picture, but that didn't work out on wireless out in the middle of nowhere.

East Side Road was a one lane road, straight up a mountain, with sheer drop offs. I can't even remember the number of times I could look strait down to the bottom of the mountain, it was so narrow. By the time we figured this out, there was no way to turn around with a 36 foot trailer and go a different way. Meanwhile, it was getting dark AND we drove into a dense fog. The fog was so bad that the best way to see was to turn off the lights and use the moon to see because otherwise it just looked like a white wall. Then there came some serious switchbacks and turns that Jason had to navigate.  Jason had to make the turns as wide as possible to get through them, but even with that, the tires on one side of the front of the truck and the opposite side of the fiver were at times both just inches from the cliff.  And of course, lets not forget the downed log we had to go around and the rain that started up the last hour or so of the drive.

We drove this way (with 2 cats who were FREAKING out) for about 2 hours, which meant that we made it about 25 miles (about halfway to the campground). Luckily Jason came upon a wider area meant to be a pullout so people can pass each other safely on the one lane road. We pulled over there, put out the slide outs and brought the cats in and just camped there for the rest of the night. With no visibility, and worsening road conditions, we had no other reasonable choice!  Luckily we had a bunch of candles I had bought in case we ever were without power. It gave me nightmares staying there because we were not level at all and it started pouring down rain and I just had these images that the fiver was either tipping over the cliff or sinking into the mud.

When we got up in the morning, it was MUCH better going because the fog had lifted and obviously we could see with a little sunshine, but also because the rest of the road was not as curvy as it had been the night before. Also, it was shorter before we came out to a paved 2 lane road and then the highway.

Our "camp spot" for the night. This is a wide section of the road. 

You can sorta see how it is  a drop off on the side of the road. 

Thanks to our friends John and Jocelyn ,who left us with some camp food when they visited, I was able to make us a delicious celebratory breakfast of eggs and turkey bacon when we finally got to our real camp spot this morning. 

The kitties relaxing and comforting each other after their terrifying adventure last night!

 It was crazy how slow we had to go, and how creepy it felt up there in the mountain tops. I still can't believe that Lola wanted us to go that way, but I guess in the future I should consult an atlas if we are going somewhere we don't know! But, now that we are here, we are excited to relax and enjoy the beautiful campground!!