It was a chilly morning in Visalia when we left to go north on California highway 99. We drove through a lot of farms and towns. You'd think that the drive would be scenic, but I thought it was boring, and the heavy traffic and annoying drivers made the drive frustrating. We made our way over to I-5 at Stockton and stopped for lunch and gas in Sacramento. Sacramento had a lot of trees, but nowhere else along the way had that many trees. Past Sacramento there was a lot of rain, though, almost continuous until we checked in to our hotel. Closer to northern California, the scenery changed from relatively flat farm land to mountainous with a lot of trees and we ascended to 4000 feet and even had some snow falling (though the roads stayed clear). We got to Ashland around 4:30 local time.