May 30, 2023 (Tue)
11:00 pm Lassen RV Park, McArthur, CA
This is certainly the quietest RV park we’ve been in—other than the birds that sound like they’re building nests in the cupboards over our heads. Otherwise, this is all very pastoral and relaxing and it’s time for showers!
This turns out to be a bench with bears at either end (and Robert in the middle) and they’re holding salmon, and one of them has goggles on. One of the perks of owning an RV park is you can decorate it any dang way you please.
12:20 pm Along highway 299
We strike out along Highway 299, before switching over to A19 and the one thing these roads have in common is they are both amazingly deserted. We see one car every five minutes or so, and mostly we look at green fields of something (Alfalfa? Spinach? Watercress?).
At one point we stop in the middle of the road to adjust something in Harvey (lights were left on and hatches weren’t battened) and sat there for five minutes and nobody noticed. Not a single car came by.
1:45 pm Weed, CA
Our destination for the day—Weed, California, the city that kept having its sign stolen.
Now these guys understand how to make money off tourists (unlike the hapless folk of Cool, CA). The first store we see is a souvenir store and it’s full of Weed signs, T-shirts, coffee cups, temporary tattoos, shot glasses—and heck there are even Weed T-shirts in sizes that are perfect for the grandkids!
There are at least two stores that sell nothing but souvenirs, and even the local café has a half-dozen different T-shirts available as we walk in the door.
Weed welcomes Gini
2:15 pm Hi Lo Café, Weed, CA
If you don’t want fast food, your options are limited in Weed. In fact, there seem to be two choices, across the street from each other: Hi Lo Café and an Espresso/Bakery/Internet Café. Since we want more than coffee and internet, we opt for the Hi Lo.
The menu has lots of interesting facts about Weed (but very, very carefully avoids any mention of marijuana)
Which also turns out to be the location of tonight’s lodging! The Hi Lo RV park(ing lot). This is a very basic RV lot—a stretch of gravel with hook-ups. Most of the folk are clearly long-term stayers (when there are stairs built up to your entrance, you’re there for more than a week). There’s no Wi-Fi; there’s rumor of showers, but none visible; (pool? Ha ha ha ha ha). Heck, we couldn’t even find a trash can.
The chief virtue of this RV park is that we can walk up to the café for dinner, which will be necessary after our next excursion.
Harvey in his basic RV camping spot
3:00 pm La Florista, Weed, CA
We are nothing if not predictable. As long as we’re spending the night in Weed, Robert might as well get some weed. There are two pot stores here, and they are across the street from each other.
Robert chooses La Florista, because he can’t find the other store, which he parked directly in front of (“Are you sure you need to be spacier?” asks Gini).
This place is huge with merchandise struggling to fill even a third of the space. Robert is the only customer (although it is mid-afternoon on a Tuesday). The other thing of note is that there is a “consumption room,” where you can go and smoke your pot. You can’t do that in Washington (you can’t even open the package inside the store), but apparently “There’s a loophole or two in the laws, and county laws, and such.”
Since we’ll be driving back to our campsite, Robert declines to sample on-site.
The counter person admits that they get a lot of business from tourists. Sadly, we don’t get a bag that says “Weed from Weed!” They must have missed that marketing memo.
Your pot gets put in a bag marked “Prescriptions,” because that’s not at all suspicious. All our prescriptions come in bags like this, except for the CVC ones (they’re in a CVC bag) and our CostCo ones (brown paper bag with bright yellow receipt stapled to it) and every other prescription we’ve ever gotten.
3:45 pm Hi Lo RV Park, Weed, CA
Now that we are safely parked in our RV spot, Robert opens up his purchase (a joint) and steps into Harvey’s bathroom to partake. He turns on the bathroom fan so that Harvey doesn’t get a contact high.
Weed in Weed
Robert reports that weed in Weed, is a lot like weed everywhere else, although, really, it’s the bathroom ambience that makes all the difference. Nap time follows.
4:00 pm Still in Weed
It’s raining steadily now—this is our first real rain since leaving weeks ago. As Northwesterners, we can distinguish between 32 types of rain, and this is a mid-November type rain. Steady, but not driving, with a bit of a March chill to it. The drops are mid-sized and you don’t want to spend much time in it. Fortunately, Harvey is water-proof, so we snuggle in our blankets and read.
6:30 pm Dinner in Weed, CA
The rain has gone away and we walk up the short climb to the Hi Lo Café where we partake of an old-fashioned pot* roast dinner (which was supposed to be meat loaf, but the waitress “hit the wrong button”). Afterwards, we walk to what used to be the Safeway to get some grapes and enjoy the pleasant evening.
[*Seriously, how did we miss this joke?]
Gini contributes: The real weed in Weed!
You may have noticed in the café article that the Safeway that’s not here any more had a totem pole in the parking lot. It’s still there. The market is now owned by its employees.
Totem pole in Ray’s Food Place parking lot, with Mt. Shasta in the background
Maps
Tuesday Travel
Gini & Robert
Harvey Staff
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