The Arnold reunion - Day 1

I was up at 3:45 this morning. The less said about that, the better. CM kindly drove me to the airport, where I had one of the smoothest boarding processes since 9/11 using SeaTac Airport's Save a Spot checkpoint option (no, they aren't paying me to say this, though I wouldn't complain if they did). The Alaska flight to Sacramento boarded on time, but departed nearly an hour late due to some unknown mechanical issue. Thankfully we had no cases of Feral Human Syndrome aboard and everyone stayed reasonably chill. The flight itself was blessedly uneventful and I slept at least part of the way.

Sacramento was a new airport for me; I wandered around a bit looking forlorn before finding the shuttle bus that took me to the car rental area. Eventually I got to the Thrifty counter, where they'd reserved me a cute little Nissan Versa *meep meep* car. After a few minutes of tossing luggage in the trunk, adjusting mirrors and turning down the radio which had been turned ALL THE WAY UP TO 11, I headed out.

It's about a two-hour drive from the Sacramento airport to the little Calaveras County town of Arnold. On the way, you drive through suburban sprawl, farmland and high desert. I stopped at a CVS in the little desert town of Valley Springs for a quick bathroom break and some road snacks. Past the desert, you begin to encounter the rolling "golden hills" and oak trees typical of rural northern California, and then start your ascent into the Sierra Nevadas on SR 4. Things change subtly, the oaks slowly shifting to evergreens, the underbrush becoming less dry and more green, the dirt by the roadside turning a vivid orange-red, and sweet peas blooming here and there. The road becomes narrower, more treacherous on the turns. Your car has to work at besting the incline, especially if it's a little *meep meep* car.

Somewhere between the airport and Arnold, Captain Midnight texted me to let me know that V had been in an accident and her car had been totaled. Fortunately, V herself was unhurt, nor was anyone else seriously injured, but she'd been badly shaken up by the accident and was very depressed at losing her transportation.

I describe Arnold as a "town," but according to the Census Bureau it is a "census-designated place" of about 3800 people. It's a typical little mountain town where the local cost of gas and groceries is so astronomical that most locals drive to Costco, nearly two hours away, to stock up every few weeks. I stopped first at Big Trees Market to pick up some late lunch (a mediocre stromboli and a banana) before checking into our rental cabin around 3 p.m. Since I was the first to arrive, I started up the air conditioner (it was unusually hot for the area, regularly getting into the mid-90s while we were there), then locked the place up and went for a drive around Arnold.

My mother's side of the family has been renting cabins and staying in Arnold for a week of summer vacation since at least the 1970s. One auntie now lives in the area full-time. (She wasn't there while we were visiting, but that's a story for later.) The cabin we typically rented when I was a kid, close to Blue Lake Springs, was still there -- but I didn't recognize it at first, as someone had bought it and added onto it to make it even larger. Some things were pretty much the same, though: the lake itself, the Giant Burger at the side of Highway 4, the twisty road that led up to Calaveras Big Trees State Park. My sibs and I didn't find a cabin close to Blue Lake Springs that was available to rent, so this time we picked a place nearby in the Lakemont Pines area.

I headed back to the cabin, took a nap, read a little Pride and Prejudice (yes, first time ever reading it; took me long enough, right?) and wondered where my sibs were. They had intended to drive out from Utah, and I thought they'd be in the area sooner than they were. Plus, nobody was responding to texts. I decided it would be better to get up and do something than sit around worrying, so I went for a pizza run. By the time I got back armed with pizza, the fam had showed up. So we sat around eating pizza, chatting about our various adventures getting there and deciding on who got which room. Michele and I decided to share the big king-sized bed and we bunked down for the night.

Sleep was... sporadic. I kept worrying about V and the accident. There wasn't much I could do for her from where I was, but I knew she had to be shaken up and unhappy, and rest doesn't come easy when you know someone you love is in a bad state.