Morning came and everyone was ready to go onto the next leg of the journey, after getting directions from the KOA guy we set out with a list of roads and highways that he told us would lead us right to Lake Tahoe in about three hours. That was at 10:30 am, needless to say by early afternoon we were nowhere near our destination and the GPS's were again not coming up with the same routes.

Having driven for over 5 hours we grew increasingly frustrated with the GPS's and the list we were given, which seem to match perfectly yet did not equal the time frame we were told. Maybe Lake Tahoe is 3 or so hours from Westport California not towing a 5700 lbs trailer.

Jeff decided that he should take the lead and took us a different direction via his GPS, I turned mine off and then restarted it and all of a sudden that P.O.S. came up with a far shorter route that matched Jeff's precisely, friggen TomTom, I assumed they gave it such a dumb name so they could concentrate on the technology, but alas that wasn't the case either.

The leader was quickly off on his own as he had obviously forgotten that my Sierra 1500 gasoline motor certainly did not have the towing power that his Sierra 2500 Diesel motor does. Soon to be out of sight and unreachable on the P.O.S. handheld radios we have to communicate, Grace, the Kids and I made our own way to our destination.

California highways really are one of the best traffic systems out there, maybe that's because BC highways suck, but I am consistently impressed with them when I drive them, everything is interconnected properly and efficiently and you get to your destination quickly and efficiently. EXCEPT IF YOUR'E USING A TOM TOM GPS !!!

The trip was beautiful once you got out of the cities and into the foot hills and then up, up, up into the mountains, the last altitude sign I saw said 7350 feet above sea level, that's a hell of a climb in one day, from at sea level to 7350 feet above it. OUCH !! you can truly feel the effect of altitude sickness when you make that trip, keeping in mind that the Coquihala summit in BC is only 2400 feet or so.

Dragging 5700lbs up that high is not easy and we didn't do much more than 40-45 MPH an hour even though the posted limits were 65 MPH, and then there were the frequent pull offs so that the train of cars stuck behind that dumb Canadian driver could pass, all together made the journey even longer.

At 10:04 pm we made our destination and as I have demonstrated 2 times already I really enjoy pulling into a camp ground in the dead of night in the pitch dark, through the unknown roads, with rocks and trees all around and narrow roads to navigate. The site office was closed and no maps of the campground were available so we were on our own to find site #7.

So after having driven into an unknown campground in the dark with only my headlights to lead the way, I found myself entering an area that my trailer did not fit into AT ALL !!!. Rounding a bend in a feeble attempt to get turned around I just about took out the right side of my trailer (yes I know, but the rock in Westport was on the left side) on a big tree, I caught it just in time but spent another 15 minutes trying to reposition truck and trailer back up the hill so that I would miss the tree and a fellow campers car on the right, while not scratching the crap out of the left front of my truck, I think a cut polish is in the future for my baby.

Finally I managed to wiggle out and back onto the main camp road and back to the site office where there was a large map posted on the wall, I found our site and pulled in, unhooked the truck and set up the trailer. 2 wobbly pops later and a few choice words to Jeff for leaving us behind and I was sooo ready for bed.

Morning came way too fast but the cool mountain air was certainly refreshing.