Day 24 - Goodbye California, Hello Nevada!

We're on our way home. It's official. We've started east. It wont be a direct route, of course, but we're definitely on the last leg. It's strange, we don't really seem to notice it. I'm not sure what that even means, exactly. We're coming home. We'll be home in about 10 days, give or take.  It's strange to think that.

I can't even remember what I did at home. I worked, but after that? I don't remember. Maybe I'll start doing something new. Maybe? I'm going to have to!

So anyway, today started late. We've been lazy. We didn't really get on the road until about 10am. We said our good-byes to Santa Rosa and made one last stop at the market for our last organic junk food haul of the trip (probably).

There's no direct route from Santa Rosa to I-80. Yeah, I-80. It goes right through "home." and here we are trying to get to it. Go figure. Originally, I-80 wasn't in our plans, but with our second stop at Santa Rosa, we could hardly avoid it.

But all roads lead to 80, so we found it no problem at all. 

Since my camera bit it yesterday, our first stop just just to the east of Sacramento so we could pick up camera #2 of the trip. It really sucks that it happened, but hey, that's life. In this world, everything in temporary. Cameras included. No need getting upset. And besides, new camera! Well, actually, it's the same camera exactly (same model). But hey, good camera, right?

Near Sacramento there is a town called Placerville. I really wanted to stop there because I have an ancestor (from only a few generations back) who was known as the Goat Doctor. He was kind of a local legend. There's even a book about him. We were going to stop by the historical society and see if anyone knew anything more about him. He used to live on a ranch, I'd love to see it. But the historical society office is open every day except, you guessed it, Mondays. Today is Monday. Go figure.

As we passed Placerville from I-80, I saw ranch after ranch on top of hills and in valleys all around. Any one of them could have been his place. I just wish I could have seen it.

His mother was a contemporary of Edgar Casey and she herself was a well known clairvoyant.  She had predicted the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and since she was respected, people listened to her, got away before it all went down and saved their necks.  Her great great great grandfather was Admiral Andre of Her Majesty's Royal Navy. He was best buds with a fellow named Benedict Arnold. Guess who convinced who to switch sides in the middle of the game? Yeah. I have cool ancestors.

We knew we'd be traveling through Donner Pass, but I was the only one who really knew the story (and I barely remembered it). We exited 80 and transversed Donner Lake where a few families from the Donner Party built cabins to hopefully survive the winter of 1844. It's now a resort. Go figure.

The museum was marginally helpful, but didn't really tell us how to get to the site. I had to look through a teacher's guide to Donner Pass to figure it out. Near the museum were two or three cabin sites. Six miles to the northeast was the camp of the actually Donner family.

While trying to get to California, 80 or so settlers broke off from a much larger group to try out this cool new short cut. Well, the short cut wasn't so short and it took them WAY longer than they expected. So long that winter set in all around them in a very bad way.  By October they were immobilized. Stuck in the mountains with little food and hardly any supplies. The Donner family (who came up with the idea of the short cut) had broken an axle. The rest of the party, feeling slightly bitter, moved on westward. But because of the snow, only made it six miles. 

Both groups realized that they would have to resort to extreme measures. They ran out of actual food and hunting in the winter is nearly impossible. So they boiled hides and leather.  Soon, members of the group that went on ahead started to die. It was not too much later when they figured out that to survive, they'd have to eat the flesh of their loved ones, wives and husbands. The Donner family had the same hardships, but there is no hard proof that they ate human flesh to survive.

Rescue parties were on their way by February, but the last of the party did not leave Donner Pass until April. Out of 80, only 42 survived.

The snow was 12 feet by the Donner family. 22 feet by the other group.  How anyone survived is well beyond me. Oddly enough, more children survived than adults.

I wish the place would have held onto the meaning better. But with the resort only a few feet away and a horribly interpreted park, what can you do?  Rick Burns (brother of Ken Burns who did the really really really long Civil War documentary for PBS) did a documentary on the Donner Party. I saw it a few years ago and highly suggest you go to the library and see if they have it.

Donner Pass was a nice break for us. It was right on the California-Nevada border and gave us a chance to try to figure out where we'd be staying tonight.

We decided to just drive until we couldn't handle it.

I-80 is beautiful out through these parts. It kind of reminds me of Arizona and parts of California, but it's very much its own thing too. The sunset was breathtaking and no pictures could convey that. We took them anyway.

The sun set and it was dark. Stars. So many stars. Smashers saw a shooting star. I, as usual, missed it. I've only ever seen a shooting star once outside of a meteor shower. That was in Gettysburg on a real special night.

Anyway, I wanted to drive until I fell asleep (not really). We talked about finding a Wal-Mart and borrowing their parking lot. But then we saw a sign that read "REPORT GUNFIRE FROM THE HIGHWAY".  We weren't exactly sure what it meant. There are a few different ways to take that. So we just forgot about that idea and pulled into Elko. A casino town with a stupid name. 

A motel again? Yeah. Last one of the trip since we'll be back on track as of tomorrow in Ogden, UT.  Ogden is where they film the TV show Everwood. It's a pretty good show, but the town is really pretty. I hope to find it.

Internet availability will be iffy from here on out. Hopefully we'll have something, but don't count on it. We'll post as often as we can. If we miss a day, we'll post it as soon as possible.

Woo!

Stats
Miles traveled today: 554
Hours on the road: 11.5
Miles traveled in total: 7624

Pictures
Pictures from Eric's Camera.
Pictures from Smashley's Camera.

Where are we?
Map showing where we are today!
(Purple = where we've been. Red = where we traveled today.)