Today was pretty scary. Unexpectedly but exhiliaratingly so. More on this later.
I woke up to a snow covered Tahoe (as predicted) and the worrying warning that I would not be allowed on any of the roads out of Tahoe without chains on my car. Worrying not because I'm scared of a bit of snow but because I've never bought, let alone installed, snow chains!! That's the kind of thing grown ups do. Ergh.
After lots of umming and aahing trying to work out whether it was worth buying chains for a car I'm only going to have for another week, I decided to bite the bullet and spend $50 on some chains. I was assured that once I got up the mountain I'd be stopped by the Highway Patrol and there would be men that would install them for me for $30. Now, I'm not a fan of paying a man to do something I'm sure I'd be capable of doing but I'm even less of a fan of frozen fingers so I decided that would be the thing to do.
Off I go on my mountain road (don't forget that my GPS has been instructed to always find the road less travelled) and to begin with it's fine. There's snow on the sides of the road but not much on the road. Then it starts storming and suddenly I can't see the road
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| (this is just before it got that bad - I thought it'd be best to have both hands on the wheel for the invisible road bits) |
I can't see these men I was promised either. So I carry on. And carry on. And eventually (40 miles later) I come out the other side of the snow. No chains. Big woop. Nobody died (in my car, anyway) Oh well. Maybe I'll be able to wear the chains as part of a Halloween costume.
After the snow I met this nice stranger:
His name was Ed. He was super nice and told me that the town I was in was called Pioneer and that he lived in the old Pony Express building. He had a few things I really loved. Firstly, his nose twitched like a bunny rabbit's. Secondly, when he put his hand on the door of my car (in the window) his rough skin scratched against the pleather and made a really grating sound. And thirdly, he was clearly mad as a box of frogs. Loved him.
The next section of my drive was (again) so scenic my eyes wanted to jump out of my head. I just can't get over how beautiful this country is, it keeps taking my breath away.
My only regret is not being able to record it all somehow. I can take some pictures but they're never enough.
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| The road less travelled |
Along I go, happy as Larry, I have the road to myself and I'm singing my little heart out... lalala... then I look more carefully at the side of the road. I realise there IS no side of the road. Instead, there's a clean drop, several thousand feet down. Ahhhhhhh!! I slow down (from about 40mph) and take it reeeeeally easy. Suddenly the comment I made to my brother earlier in the day about having so much fun on this trip I could die happy tomorrow comes back to me. I'm sure I said TOMORROW, not tonight! Suddenly it's dark. I can hardly even see the edge of the tiny narrow lane. In fact, this is as much as I could see and I think you'll agree that those weeds are NOT going to stop me from falling...
If any of you are familiar with the road between Javea and Denia, it was ten times worse (if you're not, imagine the scariest road you know and multiply it by 100) but the worst bit is that it goes on for aaaaages!! Like 10 miles. When you're doing 7mph in the dark that's a really long way.
Loved it.
American letter signs.
In movies you always see crazy signs by the side of the road, like this one I found online:
I decided to try to find the most controversial sign I could to post on my blog. So far, this is all I've come up with:
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