My 89 year-old mom’s record-setting performance on the track–mid-July in triple-digit heat–was the culmination of rare summer road trip for me & The Mate. Here’s the rest of the story.

It was hot. That SO goes without saying…except for people like me & The Mate, who live on an island surrounded by a nice, chilly Salish Sea. On Lopez, our summer temps rarely make it into the 90s. So this drive was a bit of a shock to our systems.

First stop, seeing old friends in Eugene…where it was a mere 94.

As we drove, The Mate & I made use of our Toyota’s A/C. Again: DUH. But again: We are NOT summer road-trippers. We haven’t used A/C regularly in DECADES. I can see how that stuff might catch on.

Next up: Redding, CA.

Down in San Jose (more old friends), the mercury fell to a blessed 80 or so. Thanks, San Francisco Bay! We rode along Los Gatos Creek, where I was heartened by this sign at a homeless encampment:

California never ceases to offer up visual encapsulations of itself. Like these citrus fruits left to be picked up by the San Jose Sanitation Department:

From San Jose, we made our way up to Marin County, where our Oakland cousins scored a dog-sitting gig for the summer. Well…we THOUGHT it was a score, till we learned that Marin is actually a good 10 degrees hotter than the northeast side of the Bay. Guess all that water really does the trick.

Walking was better in the evening, we found.

Next up, of course: Sacramento, and Mom’s meet, which you’ve probably already read about. Thank GOODNESS her final event ran @ 7:30 in the morning…after which we hugged, took pictures, made sure her plans were secure, and hit the road before the sun could get too high.

Quick, back to Redding!

Get the bikes out, there might still be some shade!

This time I played it smarter, hopping off my bike to stand in the nice cold Sacramento before riding on.

In the week between our southbound & northbound rides on this path, though, wildfires had ballooned. Compare the sky in this picture with the one near the start of this blog post:

Worn out from a hot day of driving (but energized by a certain lightning bolt of political news, July 21), we spent the night in Roseburg.

*not pictured: Roseburg & their darn good pizza

Our final day took us back into Washington, where the sky clouded up, the temperature sank back to a nice, “normal” high 60s…and we celebrated by going for a long walk down the incredible boardwalk of the Nisqually Delta.

Well yes, that’s the Delta (reclaimed for Nature, from previous dikes)…but what’s that about a boardwalk?

We spent that night catching up with Son Two, enjoying wearing shirts with sleeves again, and snacking on quintessential Pacific Northwest snackage in his Seattle-area neighborhood:

Now, in case you’re wondering, “Gretchen, didn’t you just blog about earning your MFA in Creative Writing and working on your novel? so what the heck are you doing road-tripping? Shouldn’t you be getting BACK TO WORK?”…Mother Nature had the same idea.

Waiting for the ferry to take us back to Lopez, I took a walk along the shore, where I was greeted by these stunning goldenrods. Since “Goldenrods” is the name given to my graduating cohort at Antioch (they’re doing flower names now–Hydrangea, Iris, Lilac, etc.), I took these flowers as a sign.

This blog post is a down payment. Back to the novel tomorrow! But good luck out there, all y’all non-islanders out there dealing with “normal” summer heat. Stay safe, stay cool. (Go wading!) And thanks for riding with me.