Miles of Burnt Forest...Then We Saw Green

Susanville, California to Grants Pass, Oregon Some drives are beautiful from the very first mile. This one made us wait for it. As we left Susanville and headed north toward Grants Pass, mile after mile told the story of what wildfire can do to a forest. Blackened trunks stood across the hillsides. Whole stretches of country looked stripped down to almost nothing. In places, it seemed like the burned trees just kept going. It was quiet in a strange way. You could look across those hills and imagine what they must have looked like before the fires came through. Thick forests. Green mountains. Wildlife tucked away between the trees. Then, in what must have felt like no time at all, everything changed. Driving through it in the motorhome gave us plenty of time to look around and really take it in. This wasn't just a small burned patch along the side of the highway. We drove through long stretches of fire-scarred country, and it became one of those parts of a trip that stays with you. But then something began to change. At first, there were just a few more green trees. Then a few more. And before long, the dark burned hills started giving way to living forest again. Green. Lots and lots of green. After seeing so much of the landscape burned, those first stretches of healthy forest somehow looked even more beautiful than they normally would. It reminded us that nature does not simply give up. A forest can be scarred terribly and still begin again. Small plants return. Trees grow. Wildlife comes back. Slowly, sometimes almost too slowly to notice, life starts filling in the empty places. There was something pretty powerful about watching that happen right outside the windshield. And that is one of the reasons we love traveling this way. When you're flying over the country, you miss all of this. When you're racing down the interstate, sometimes you miss it too. But when you're wandering along in an RV, taking the back roads and watching the scenery change mile by mile, you get to see the whole story. The burned forest. The mountains. The little towns. The lonely stretches of road. And then, when you least expect it, the green comes back. By the time we worked our way toward Grants Pass, Oregon, the scenery had changed completely. We had gone from dry, fire-scarred country into beautiful green mountains and forests, and it felt like we had traveled through two completely different worlds in the same day. That's the kind of day we remember. Not because everything we saw was beautiful. But because the whole journey was. Come ride along with us in the video below and see the drive for yourself.