Chapter 5

Why Cooper James had decided to camp along the Klamath River where he did was a mystery to me. If he'd left Seattle headed for Santa Rosa, he had two choices, one was to take the coastal route along highway 101, or the inland route on I-5. He must have chosen the I-5 route to begin with, because we were only a few miles west of it now.

We were on highway 96, the road that followed the Klamath river across the Klamath National Forest. It met up with highway 263 a few miles west, and from there it was either a couple of miles back north to hit a junction with I-5 or else just a dozen miles or so south to Yreka, where 263 and I-5 merged. He must've decided to switch over to the coastal route once he hit California for some reason and was planning to take this road west and south until he hit the coast. Still, looking at the terrain on the GPS' map, I couldn't see what attracted him to this new plan. Another bit of information that didn't make sense.

"Like why the hell I'm here!" I yelled into the Road King's rumble. Still no answer from the voice, the coward.

I found my breakfast less than a half hour later, and in the perfect spot – halfway through Yreka within spitting distance of the on ramp to I-5 South. Denny's isn't what you'd call inspirational food, but they had what I wanted and they weren't shy about letting me pay for a little extra of this and that. I had fried eggs, crisp bacon and a waffle big enough to choke a horse slathered with butter and drowned in blueberry syrup. I was very happy when I left the place, and I think my smile even made the old sourpuss at the cash register happy.

I hit a Texaco just before the on ramp and filled my gas tank – at the price of gas these days I was sure glad it was only a motorcycle tank I was filling! With me and the Road King both fueled, I wasted no time getting on I-5 and heading south.

I spent the morning cruising from Yreka to Williams, a couple of hundred miles to the south. I found a pizza place off the highway for lunch, topped off the gas tank and sat staring at the GPS while I finished the big frosty root beer I'd ordered with it. Did I want to stay on I-5 South until I hit the junction to I-505 and follow that into Vacaville, switch to I-80 in Vacaville and take it to Vallejo where I could get on highway 37 and swing west around the north end of San Pedro Bay to take highway 101 up through Petaluma and on to Santa Rosa?

My alternative was to switch to highway 20 here in Williams and follow it west and south to Clearlake before following highway 29 south to Calistoga. The Calistoga – Santa Rosa leg was much less clear than any other leg I had under consideration, but as far as that went, the map suggested that Calistoga was more or less a suburb of Santa Rosa. There should be plenty of help in Calistoga for finding my way to Santa Rosa. The highway 20 and 29 route was also showing as being little more than 90 miles of road between here and there, and in the end, that decided it for me. I could go at my own pace on slower roads and still get there before the end of the afternoon, find myself a room for the night and a decent dinner. I could track down the offices of Darius Booker and perhaps wrap up with getting on with the life that Cooper James had left me.

Highway 20 out of Williams was easy to find and dead flat to begin with. Twenty miles later things got less flat as the highway cut through Cortina ridge. Things weren't so bad for a while as we followed a valley between two of the ridges, but once we turned west, things got wrinkled again and between there and Clearlake, the wrinkles turned into some serious hills. Clearlake itself was a pretty smooth area, and it stayed that way for a few miles until we got past Lower Lake, a Clearlake suburb.

Lower Lake led to Hidden Valley Lake, which led to Middletown. Middletown led to Calistoga, but between the two lay Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, and there the road got about as twisty as you could ever hope to see. The park featured the lovely and scenic Mount Saint Helena, not to be confused with Mount Saint Helens in Oregon that blew its top so spectacularly back in 1980, and highway 29 wound its way around the eastern edges of that rather large bump in the Earth. No more cruising along valley floors for us. It was ridge line to ridge line and all kinds of up and down and back and forth.

Coming down into the flats that meant we'd made it to Calistoga was a beautiful change of pace, but it was a change of pace that was only a few miles long before we'd crossed the little valley it nestled into and hit more endless foothills and winding roads, though they were mild compared to those around Mount Saint Helena.