When you unlock the driver’s side door, the car begins to tick; it’s like a time bomb.  It is a time bomb, actually — because if you don’t get the key in the ignition and crank it over within about 10 seconds, the horn starts blaring, lights start flashing, and you become that guy — the one who can’t get his #&@! car to shut up.

It took me a little while to figure out this routine.  Unlock the door and TOUCH NOTHING until you start the car.  It’s really annoying to have to start the car every time you want to grab something out of the back seat or trunk, and of course we still set that stupid alarm off at least once a day, but hey, I’m paying $7 a day for this thing; I’m not complaining.  Much.

The 2010 Ford Focus that my husband and I rented from Alamo in south Florida is really not a bad car, and you can’t beat the price.  But sometimes I do want to beat this car with a stick.  This car is kind of an asshole.

The stereo automatically mutes itself until everyone is buckled up.  This isn’t a problem, really, because of course everyone should buckle up all the time, but it gives the car a major air of self-righteousness.  I was gonna buckle up before we got going!  Stop assuming I’m so irresponsible!  Yeesh.

The real issue with the stereo, though, is that it won’t let you turn up the volume very far.  This thing is just loaded with parental controls.  Look, I’m not some reckless hooligan, but I like to drive with the windows down and the radio up and this a-hole car won’t let me enjoy that.  Screw you, cheap Focus.

Possibly the most obnoxious of the controls on this car is the speed governor.  Now I wasn’t planning on driving over 80mph, so I don’t really mind that I can’t, but what I do mind is that the car won’t stop dinging to warn me that I’m close to my max speed when I’m driving 75mph.  The speed limit is 70, and everyone knows that the real speed limit is whatever’s on the sign +10.  I should be able to go 5 over without the car flipping out on me.  And I’d like to be able to hear my music while I barely speed, please.

Lastly, our rental is black.  I’m not car racist, but this just isn’t a good idea in south Florida in the summer — look what it did to my gummy bears!

Not all of Alamo’s rental cars are like this one, and next time I rent one, I’ll be sure to get one without so many controls.  And honestly, for $7 a day, it could be a lot worse.

Want to know how we found a $7-a-day rental?  Read my tip on Traveldudes.org.

Not many people go driving through northern California.  There’s not a lot going on there and it’s pretty far from any major tourist destinations, but there are lots of great camping spots in the area, and some great roadside attractions if you ever find yourself passing through.  On our recent drive from Portland to Reno, my husband and I were rolling down lonely CA-139 when we saw signs for Petroglyph Point just south of Tulelake, California.

Petroglyph Point is a really stunning rock standing in the middle of a vast plain in Lava Beds National Monument.  The plain used to be covered by Tule Lake, and this rock was an island in the middle.  The water carved some fascinating patterns on this stone.

Ancient inhabitants of this region used to canoe out to the island and carve artwork into the rock.  No one today knows the true significance of the carvings, but historians are certain that it is artwork and not writing, because the tribes that lived in the area had no written alphabet.  The age of the rock art is not known for certain, though some researchers date it at up to several thousand years old.  Their best guess is that this art tells a story of some sort, but there’s little evidence to indicate what that story may be.  Perhaps it’s something about bugs.

Walking around this rock, you can see petroglyphs stretching out all along its base — some are higher than others, and while in some spots the glyphs are very faint, there are other points where the rock is very busy with carvings.

Petroglyph Point is a spot where you can really see ancient history — both in the carvings done by humans and the patterns left on the rock from the water.  Definitely worth a detour if you’re in the area.

My husband has around 12 years of contract delivery driving experience in Oregon.  He knows the roads here as well as anyone — he’s driven every major road in the state, most of the minor ones, and a lot of roads that most people never knew existed.  Every once in a while, we’ll go on a drive and take a detour down one such road.

This mossy service road near Oakridge, Oregon was barely marked and almost unnoticeable from the main road.  But at some point in his travels, my husband had noticed it, and wanted to show me where it led.

The Middle Willamette River fork is dammed off to form this reservoir, which we reached shortly after turning off.

We drove about 20 minutes more, followed Staley Creek down yet another service road, and found ourselves in a beautiful gorge.  McKenzie said that although he’s seen signs of human activity there (the road is paved, after all), he’s never seen another person anywhere nearby, and therefore he considers it his own.  We explored around the creek for a while.

I’ve only seen water this blue in Bermuda and in Oregon.

McKenzie remembered that he’d planted a geocache somewhere in this gorge back in 2002, and hadn’t checked on it since.  Whaddya know, we stumbled upon it while we wandered, and we were both surprised at how many visitors it has had over the past 8 years.

There were about 15 entries in the logbook, and lots of new items in the cache.  McKenzie had loaded it up with lots of items to begin with, and we’re hoping that the person that took Bridge for Dummies is enjoying the game that brought us together.  Some of the entries were from hunters who stumbled upon the cache accidentally.  A particularly amusing entry read: “I was worried it was a bomb, so I made my husband check it out.”  Most thanked McKenzie for helping them discover this lovely gorge.  We left an updated entry and went on our way.

There are places like this all over the country — some of the most beautiful spots on earth are barely known or seen by humans, even when they’re just a short trip outside a major city.  Who says there’s nothing left to discover in North America?

I don’t do much driving around here because I’d much rather spend my time looking out the window, at things other than the road.  On our drive back to Portland from northern California, there were some magnificent views of Mt. Shasta from I-5.

I love the lenticular clouds that form above the mountain peaks here.  We didn’t have those on the east coast.  The clouds on top of Shasta were in constant motion; the mountain looked like a bubbling cauldron.  It was spectacular.

Next to Mt. Shasta is Black Butte.  Here’s a family photo of the two of them.

Black Butte is much more impressive when you don’t compare it to a 14,179′ tall mountain.

From this point on I-5, the weather was clear enough that we could faintly see Mt. McLoughlin in Oregon, but I couldn’t capture it on my cheap digital camera.  Of course the clouds rolled in as we got closer, so I wasn’t able to get a good shot of any of the Oregon Cascades on this drive, but there was one more photo-op once we crossed state lines.  This is Table Rock just outside of Ashland, Oregon.

I took all of these pictures from our moving Subaru on Interstate 5, on January 11, 2010.