The Next Day - Saturday

I woke up Saturday a bit stiff and sore, but feeling like I'd slept pretty well, which, like I said, was the first time in a week or more.

I was sort of nervous stomach queasy feeling so I decided that I'd just take a Gravol each morning we were travelling.  Better to feel a bit dozy than to start to feel nauseated and wonder if I was going to be sick.

From what I remember, we headed down Highway 58 and then to 97 and I remember thinking that it looked more like a back road than the highways I'm used to.  It was pretty.  And straight.  And I was in places I'd not been before.

We saw dust devils stirring on fields and I remember being struck by the very clear thought of "I'm on my way to Burning Man."

Some point Saturday, we stopped at a lake so one of us (who'd been dying to) could jump in a lake, and when we found the portapotties, our driver had the unfortunate discovery that one of the portapotties a) did not have a lock and b) was occupied by c) someone... er... sitting.  Ahem.

But it's funny when it doesn't happen to you!

The plan was to stop in Klamath Falls for the day and I guess it was just after a massive downpour when we rolled into town but the place was dead.

Like, we all kind of looked around and then stared wide-eyed at each other.  It was, I swear, something out of a zombie flick.  Where was everyone!?

We found a very sweet Mexican restaurant that was open, but just like Friday, I wasn't very hungry.  I loved the service there though, and we were happily fed and tired when we got to our campsite.

It was kind of neat, actually, there were six or seven other campsites with Burners in them.  There may have been more than that, but those were the ones we could see with the decorated bikes, and happily excited campers.  You'd see, on the road the people going down to Burning Man.  It would usually be the bikes you'd notice.  Not normal bikes, but fun bikes.  Bikes with bells and whistles, sometimes literally.  Bright bikes with big tires, fun, fun, fun and colourful.

And packed cars.  Young people from Alberta with giant (rented?) RVs, older Americans with big old campers and purple beards, and trailers full of stuff.  And bikes.

And then you'd see "the man" symbol, sometimes visible on the back of their vehicle.  We duct taped a man onto our RV too, and the girls started to decorate their bikes.  Something I'd done the week before we left.

We found out that the couple next to us was heading to Burning Man too.  They had a great story, this couple in their 50s.  They hadn't been planning on going this year, but were out travelling in their RV, when a friend called with two tickets.  As seems to happen so often with all things Burning Man, everything worked out so that the one night they were at a fixed address, their friend was able to overnight the tickets to them, and they'd spent that week finding whatever supplies they needed and were happy for the spontaneous trip to happen.

Cool.