Friday Night Halfway in... Redding
Jul. 26th, 2024 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIt's Friday night, and it's time for another episode of Friday Night Halfway. That's the term I coined for my approach of driving halfway to something we want to do far away on Saturday, on Friday night. It splits the time and effort of driving and gives us more time to do the thing we actually want to do on Saturday. I've been doing Friday Night Halfways for just over 9 years now. ...At least that's how long I've been blogging about it. I'm pretty sure I've actually been doing it for at least 12 years and more likely 15+.
Tonight's Friday Night Halfway brings us to Redding, California. It's a city of just under 100,000 population at the northern end of California's enormous Central Valley. It's the biggest city in northern California and a reasonable stopping off point for where we're going tomorrow: hiking in the Shasta-Trinity mountains west of Mt. Shasta, which is north of here. This is the almost-last minute trip we planned 48 hours ago.
How was the trip? I mean, the first half. 😅 The drive to Redding is just over 250 miles. Sans traffic and stops I could hammer through it in about 3h40m. But with Friday afternoon traffic and stops for dinner and gas it took us just over 5½ hours.
Tonight's Friday Night Halfway brings us to Redding, California. It's a city of just under 100,000 population at the northern end of California's enormous Central Valley. It's the biggest city in northern California and a reasonable stopping off point for where we're going tomorrow: hiking in the Shasta-Trinity mountains west of Mt. Shasta, which is north of here. This is the almost-last minute trip we planned 48 hours ago.
How was the trip? I mean, the first half. 😅 The drive to Redding is just over 250 miles. Sans traffic and stops I could hammer through it in about 3h40m. But with Friday afternoon traffic and stops for dinner and gas it took us just over 5½ hours.
- We pulled out of our garage at 3:30pm. I'd been hoping to hit the road earlier, at 3pm, but two afternoon work meetings got added to my calendar in the past 48 hours.
- At least we were able to pack quickly so our leaving wasn't further delayed. It helps that we just need our hiking gear and changes of outdoors clothes for 2 days.
- We fought through lots of traffic leaving the Bay Area. It took us just over 2 hours to get to Fairfield, where the Bay Area gives way to the Central Valley. Without traffic that part of the drive would take just a smidge over 1 hour.
- We stopped for dinner in Fairfield. After that we only had traffic for about 5 more miles getting to Vacaville. Then, as we exited I-80 onto I-505, all the traffic melted away. For the next two hours it was just hammering across the plain of the Central Valley.
- About that fire....
- We saw this huge smoke cloud (photo above) from the Park Fire near Chico starting over 100 miles away.
- Here in Redding it's HOT. It's not literally on fire, though you could be forgiven for thinking so with an afternoon high temperature of 102° today and smoke choking the air from the Park Fire east of here. By the time we arrived at 9pm the temperature was a still-warm 89° F.
- We're staying tonight at a Holiday Inn hotel. I thought maybe we stayed here once before, years ago, but it turns out it's new to us. It's not a new hotel, though, but at least we've got a comfortable room. They thankfully left the A/C on for us so we didn't walk into a sweatbox.
