Another morning on the long and winding road. It’s a short little journey between Arcata and Redding if you happen to own a helicopter otherwise it’s a long tedious (but, once again, amazingly beautiful) drive up and down and through the Cascade Mountains (I think). A lot of the journey was through the Shasta/Trinity forest and alongside the Trinity River. It made me want to take up kayaking, or at least stop and pitch a tent for a few days. Another very magical ride, although we are getting a little tired of the G forces that we are pulling in the van as we careen down these mountainsides.

Redding is not a particular nice looking town. A bit too big to be quaint but not big enough to have its own energy. It comes across as a very stale and functional place. If you are living out in the bush and need some auto parts or a new saw blade then Redding is where you would head. I’m sure that there are some very nice areas but I didn’t see any. It was a very good gig tonight with a small but enthusiastic audience. We lost about thirty or so customers right off the top. I guess we didn’t give them what they were expecting, which had the hall manager freaking out on Mike Sponarski as he was trying to mix the show. But I kind of consider confounding expectations to be a badge of honour.

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An easy little jog down the highway today: no winding mountain streams to follow. Just the blacktop straight in to Chico…home of Sierra Nevada brewing company, brewers of one of the best pale ales on the planet.

This is kind of an interesting little town. It is surrounded by a lot of typical urban sprawl, but the downtown is integrated with the university which gives the town a great energy. I wish that we had more time to hang out. We did get a chance to check out one of the bars on the strip as we watched our Canadiens fall to the lowly Flyers. Montreal’s twenty year old goaltending phenom was just not up to the challenge and nobody goes very far in the playoffs without great goaltending. Go Penguins.

A very nice theater tonight. It was a little bit big for us but we had a decent size and very enthusiastic audience. We had another very good show. We were a little unfocussed at times but I think most of the songs sat nicely. Nine shows in ten nights and several hundred miles of mountain roads has taken its tole. We are pretty bagged and ready for a bit of a break, but these last ten days have been pretty amazing from a musical and sightseeing point of view. Its always fun to explore new territory. We also really appreciate the heavy llama support. We’ll see some of you in the South West in a few weeks.