We got underway at 9:30 after scurrying around closing up the house, walking the dog and packing the car. The weather was cool and the smoke from all of the fires made the sky brown and smelly. I fussed around with the air flow in the car starting with recirculation. That made it pretty stale, so I turned on the air conditioning at 75 degrees. That seemed to filter the smoke pretty well. The smoke got worse as we headed up I5. We could see it blowing across the fields. When we reached Corning, we stopped for lunch at a Subway and the sky started to clear slightly. It got warmer as the sky cleared. It got up to the low 90's at Redding. It was here where we saw an actual fire a few miles northwest of town. When we reached Mt Shasta City, the smoke was gone and the weather was beautiful.
We headed up US97 at Weed. Traffic was fairly light until we hit Klamath Falls. From there into Bend it was heavier. We are staying at the Shilo Inn in Bend. Our room is about 10 feet from the Deschuttes River where we can watch the ducks, swans and geese swimming around. The hotel is very dog-friendly. They gave us a dog gift of a water bowl filled with toys, treats and doggie clean-up bags. They even let us take KD to the outdoor restaurant where we had dinner. We will come back here again. I checked the web site for the Shilo in Klamath Falls, and they take dogs too. Looks like we will stop there on the way home. That way, we will know why the Benson's like it so much.
