The weather window.....

 8:14 am - Sunday - April 27th - Honey Lake Rest Area, CA - 39° F, humidity 83%, wind 9 mph out of the west by southwest.....heavy cloud cover, and rain.....forecast high for today is 55° F.  The view this morning.....

Honey Lake in the distance....rain in the foreground

The forecast for Saturday was rain/snow most of the morning, and that held true for the most part.  We really wanted to drive the next leg of our return journey to Likely, but not in the snow, or rain, so we were hoping for a 'weather window' to begin the drive north.  Our drop dead time for not leaving the Elks Lodge Saturday was around 4 pm as it is 121 miles to the Honey Lake Rest Area where we planned to overnight, and then finish the final 85 miles to LPG&RVR Sunday morning. We wanted to arrive well before sundown....never a good idea to arrive anywhere in a 40,000 pound, 62' long RV/trailer after dark.  This is what it looked like around 9 am Saturday morning....

.....the weather guessers figured the rain/snow would stop around 3 pm, but the snow turned to rain, and then by 11:30 am it had stopped raining....mostly.  To prepare for an imminent departure I stowed the Starlink dish, then disconnected, and rolled up our fresh water hose leaving just the electrical to disconnect.  A little after 12 pm it stopped raining altogether, so I turned over the big Detroit Diesel 6v92, disconnected from the electrical, and stowed the entrance step for the Newell.  We decided not to insert the VW until we arrived at the local Maverick fuel station, about 5 miles away.

We arrived at the Maverick within 15 minutes, and after I had turned on the diesel pump, went to help TLE insert the Beetle.  From beginning to end it took less than 25 minutes to top off our diesel tank for the summer (took 89 gallons at $3.17/gallon), and stow the Beetle.  Once that was done we were our our way north again on US-395.  We had to run the Newell windshield wipers for the first time in several years as we slowly edged our way northward, but it never rained hard, and never for very long.  

The Garmin Truckers GPS indicated our ETA (estimated time of arrival) at Honey Lake was 3:28 pm, and that is exactly when we arrived.  What little rain there was ended about 40 miles before the Rest Area, and when we arrived it was virtually empty.....just one other Class A motorhome there.  The best time to overnight in a Rest Area (where allowed) is on the weekend, because there aren't as many semis on the road then, meaning the odds are you won't have a semi with a refer running all night in the space next to you.  If you've read our blog for any length of time you now we've experienced that before.....more than once.

By the time we settled in it was after 4 pm, so TLE began to reheat a tuna chowder she had prepared that morning before we left.  It was probably her best effort at a chowder, and I'm pretty sure it was 'restaurant quality'....I would definitely order that in a restaurant.  The perfect dinner for a chilly, blustery, rainy afternoon!

So, with our safe arrival at the Honey Lake Rest Area we have just 85 miles separating us from LPG&RVR.  Certainly, we could have covered those final miles before sundown Saturday, but it was raining at our summer destination, and we don't like arriving anywhere that late in the day, so we're happy with our decision to overnight at the Rest Area.

Thanks for stopping by!