California - Day 31 - through Redding to Oroville

Oroville/Feather Falls Casino KOA, Oroville

Thursday, 31 March 2022

Before leaving the Mt. Shasta campground, I finished the blog post for Day 14.  I'd written all of it yesterday afternoon, but the internet connection was so incredibly slow I couldn't insert the photos.  For some reason, speed wasn't a problem this morning, so I got that one done.  Now only 14 more to do to be caught up.

today's route

Google wanted me to go directly to the interstate from the campground, but I chose to drive through Mt. Shasta all the way to the end of the town.  (Not being related to James James Morrison Morrison - or his mother for that matter.)

What I saw once I passed the main business area was a nice little town with Mt. Shasta itself visible from just about everywhere in town.  The mountain is about 15 miles away, and since it's over 14,000' high, you can imagine that it's not able to hide.  It really is beautiful.

Just past Dunsmuir, I saw the highway exit for the Pacific Crest Trail.   In fact, I crossed it several times today and realized I saw it at other points as I drove through California.  I'll be seeing it again in Oregon and Washington.

I saw another of those bear signs - just a picture of a momma and her cub with no words.  But you know how many words they say a picture's worth.

I saw a CA license plate that read: BEAMZG - which I assume is Be Amazing.

I passed a large area where there was burned ground instead of forest - the result of one of CA's devastating wildfires.  This one was from the Delta fire in 2018 that burned more than 63,000 acres.  Given how many fires CA's had in recent years, and how much land they burned, I'm surprised I haven't seen more areas like this.

I passed a large lake to the east, which turned out to be Lake Shasta.  It's the result of the Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River - this dam being the 9th tallest in the US.  Pretty lake.

A sign told trucks to watch out for "sharp curves, steep grades next 1½ miles."  I only got 4 hours of sleep last night and roads like this are a problem.

I got to Redding (pop. 93,611) and stopped off at a Target, which is the chain where I'd bought my first space heater.  This one didn't have any (though the staff thought they did), but I did find latex and non-latex gloves which I haven't been able to find until today.  I use them for dumping my waste tanks and cleaning my bathroom, so they're an essential in this household.

I had to fight with Google but I got a route through town and saw a nice old downtown area and several pleasant parks.  Snow-topped mountains to the east.  It seemed a pleasant place, though I learned that it has unusually high temperatures in the summer - it got up to 126° in 2020.  The 2018 Carr Fire destroyed a good part of Shasta County (Redding is the county seat), burning 1,100 buildings and killing 6 people.

On the drive today I saw several signs and heard several mentions on the radio about the State Of Jefferson.  That's it - just the name.  So I looked it up and learned that this is a proposal to have chunks of southern Oregon and northern California break off from their states to form a 51st state.  This is only one of several such proposals around the country, and I feel certain that none of them is likely to succeed.  But it seems to be strongly under discussion in this area, so if you're interested, here's the Wikipedia page.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Jefferson-proposed-Pacific-state

I started seeing mountains on both sides of the road that had snow on them.  As I drove south I started thinking I was seeing the Sierra Nevada mountains rather than the Cascades, and finally looked it up.  Although I didn't bother to find out exactly where one stops and the other starts, I did learn that the Cascade Mountain Range forms the northern portion and the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range forms the southern portion of the stretch of mountains that runs from the Mojave Desert into British Columbia.  The Sierra Nevadas include Mt. Whitney (in CA), the tallest mountain in the Lower 48; Yosemite National Park (also in CA); and Lake Tahoe (in both CA and NV).  So a variety of geographic stars.

Near Red Bluff I started seeing huge orchards.  The leaves were only just starting to come out but I thought they might be pecans until I saw a sign saying "Sunsweet - 100 Years."

In fact, I saw a variety of orchards with trees of different heights (I think I saw their natural heights, not that some were younger or something) and different amounts of leaves having appeared.

Not far from Chico, I almost ran into oncoming cars from lack of sleep.  I've just got to get this problem solved.  

Obviously needing to take a break, I ended up stopping on the street in Chico and walked around some office buildings with lots of flowers and bushes, not having found a park.  Turns out Chico is home of Bidwell Park, one of the world's largest urban parks, but I never saw it.  Chico's 2020 population was 101,475, a substantial increase over 2010's 86,187.  They must be doing something right to attract so many new folks.  I thought it looked like a pleasant town.

As I drove on down the road, I passed lots of horses and cows, lots more orchards, and found quite a few bugs hitting the windshield.  I haven't been seeing many bugs anywhere else so far this year, but they seem to be happy in this area, since there were so many of them.

I've seen several billboards saying, "Wide Open Spaces - Courtesy of Your Local Cattlemen."

And then on to tonight's campground, which is a KOA attached to a casino.  The campground was very pleasant, though with maybe too much pavement (i.e. the whole campground), and although I had a little trouble finding places for us to walk, it was still a nice change from dirt-only campgrounds.