Redding, CA

We arrived in Redding, CA on Friday, May 13 (the only Friday the 13th in 2016) and loved the park that we stayed in.  JGW RV Resort was a great park right on the Sacramento River and we were assigned a double site.  Since no one was coming in behind us, we could stretch out in the 100' site.   The park was very clean and everyone, staff and guests, were really friendly.

Sacramento River view from RV Park

On Saturday, we took off for a day of sightseeing.  We went to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  The roadway through the park, was only open 10 miles from our entrance, so we drove in the 10 miles to Devastated Area and enjoyed what we could see.  Since it had been in the mid-90's on Friday, the 55 degree weather in the park was a little cool for me.

Lassen was created as a National Park in August 1916.  Lassen is the only park in the world that has all four types of volcanoes, shield, composite, cinder cone and plug dome.  Lassen Peak is one of the largest plug dome volcanoes in the world and last erupted between 1914 and 1921 with the largest explosion on May 22, 1915.

Lassen Peak

Chaos Craigs and Chaos Jumbles

Manzanita Lake

We then went onto Burney Falls at the McArthur - Burney Falls Memorial State Park.  What a site, probably one of the most significant waterfalls we've seen.  It is not the largest or highest waterfall in CA, 129 foot falls, but many consider it to the be most beautiful.  Burney Creek originates from the parks underground springs and flows to Lake Britton at a flow of 100 million gallons every day.

I made my first trip to an airport since I retired - can't believe it's been over 3 years since flying.  Well, we didn't go flying, but we enjoyed dinner at Peter Chu's Skyroom in the Redding Airport.
Here's just our appetizers - the dinner was great and we definitely had leftovers.

Sunday morning we decided to try the kayaking from the boat ramp at the park.  First attempt for me, the water was a little swift and I was not sure I was going to be able to make it upstream.  Craig checked it out and so I tried again, and we had a great ride.  We met many other's including the paddle board couple that was going all the way to Red Bluff.  We so enjoy the river - so peaceful and lots of wildlife.

RV Park on shore

We then went into Redding and walked across the SunDial Bridge, which is only truly accurate in telling time on Summer Solstice, but it's shadow was only off a little today.  The bridge had it's grand opening on July 4, 2004 after 11 years of construction.  It's 720 feet long and 23 feet wide costing about 24 million dollars.  The walkway is made up of 2,245 glass panels.

Glass Walkway Panels

Shadow of Sun Dial

Markers on the ground that the shadow lines up
with to determine time of day

Occupied swallow nest under glass panels

From there we drove up and around Shasta Lake to check out a couple of RV parks that we thought we could stay in, but we were not successful.  We found one park that was pretty primitive but did have 70' sites, but no marina.   We were so impressed with how much water was in the lake this visit, compared to the last time when all the marinas/boat docks were totally out of the water.

Picture of Mount Shasta as we were driving on I5.

We had a beautiful sunset to close out the day and visit to Redding.

Monday morning we head north to Grants Pass, OR where we will stay for one week.

Sacramento Area - Lake Minden TTN

We stayed in our membership park north of Sacramento, Lake Minden TTN, from May 2 through the 13th.  We enjoyed all the Hummingbirds that came to feed at our feeder, having to refill it 2-3 times a day.  We also had lots of gold finches visiting the bird feeder and continued to change the water in the bird bath multiple times due to the mess they made.

After giving Lexie a couple of days in Lodi, to recover from her gastro issues, we needed to give her a few days here at Lake Minden to recover from her limping.  She started significantly limping on her right front leg, the one where she has elbow dysplasia, the day after we arrived.  Not sure if she tripped, twisted it or whatever, but we tried to keep her still, administered cold laser treatments every other day and iced her leg.  She is still limping, but not as badly as the first couple of days.

We had a storm go through the area on Thursday, mostly rain and some hard hail.  A little scary as the storms moved through the area as there is no cover for the motorhome in a hail storm.  Craig heard while in Yuba City having the Explorer serviced, that damaging hail was going through the area, but the quarter size hard hail went north of us.

On Saturday the weather was primarily cloudy, with a few showers, so we decided to travel to Clarksburg and then down to Locke.  During these travels which was again part of the CA Delta, we came across multiple draw bridges.  The one pictured below was quite interesting and was apparently designed by the same engineer who did the Golden Gate Bridge.

We stopped at three locations:

Old Sugar Mill:  The Old Sugar Mill was originally the Amalgamated Sugar Company, a functioning mill in Utah that closed during the Great Depression. It was shipped piece by piece, brick by brick, to Clarksburg, where it was rebuilt and functioned as a mill that turned sugar beets into pounds of sugar until 1993.  From 1993 until 2000, the mill was vacant until it was bought by John Carvalho Jr., and renovations began in 2003 to make it a wine and tourism destination.

Bogle Winery:  The Bogle family started farming in the Clarksburg area in the 1800s and they are now into the sixth generation that is working on the farms.  They planted their first vineyard in 1968 and opened the winery 10 years later.  They started out planning on keeping the winery small, but at this time they are distributing to all 50 states and 40 countries.  For such a large distribution, the winery is still being ran as a very humble, small winery, utilizing the same farming techniques as when they started and providing an excellent wine for a very reasonable price.

Bogle Winery Tasting Room

Locke:  This small town was established in 1915 and is the only existing town in America built and inhabited almost exclusively by Chinese until recent years.  in the 1920s to 1940s, there was a population of about 600.  In 1971 the town was placed on the Registry of National Historic Places.  Today there are only about 90 residents, with less than 15 who are Chinese.  In 1990, Locke became a National Historic Landmark.

Star Theatre 

Locke Memorial Garden

School Museum

School room

We stopped for ice cream in this fountain and met
Martha, who shared the history about Locke and
the CA Delta.  We were there for about
an hour and so enjoyed our visit with her. 

The rest of our time at Lake Minden, we just kicked back and enjoyed.

Friday, May 13, we moved north to Redding, CA for three nights.

Lodi, CA

We arrived into the Stockton Delta Tower KOA on April 25.  We had never heard of the CA Delta region and was hoping to kayak on the sloughs off the San Joaquin and/or Sacramento rivers.  The park had this big bouncy trampoline (see picture below) feature in their playground that we have never seen.  There were people of all ages on it the entire week we were there, sometimes as many as 15 kids at one time and we enjoyed watching them from our site.

Oak Ridge Winery is the oldest operating winery in Lodi, California, built in 1934.  The Oak Ridge Winery tasting facility is located inside a beautiful 50,000 gallon California redwood tank. As a tank, it’s so big that earlier owners gave it the name of Das Weinhaus or “The Wine House.” The tank was first used for wine storage by the Roma Wine Company when it reopened shortly after the repeal of the national Prohibition law in the 1930s. It was then used by a couple of wineries until being moved to it’s present location at Oak Ridge Winery.  The floor, staves, and top of the tank are original. The doors, windows, and roof were added at that time.

We only made it out sightseeing one day as Lexie was having gastro issues.  So we took her to a vet, got medications and then gave her a couple recovery days.  On our day trip, we went down to Manteca to check out another membership park, Turtle Beach.   The park is right on the San Joaquin river and had great places to put in the kayaks.  We enjoyed seeing the geese and their little ones in the field above the slough.  The only TTN park we have not visited in CA is the Yosemite park.

We then travelled to Discovery Bay, CA which is a man made development where every home has waterfront property in their backyard, except the golf country club homes.  We looked at one very small lot that was for sale - $465,000 for just the lot with utilities.  Almost every home we saw had boats parked at their homes, but the community also had a very impressive marina with dry and slip storage.

On our way back to camp, we drove along the western side of the Delta, hwy 160 to Rio Vista and then east on hwy 12.   We didn't realize that hwy 160 was a $5.00 toll, but it provided the best view of the Delta we could see from any one spot.  The bridge went way up, but of course we could not stop to take pictures.  This area has draw bridges everywhere, sometimes 2-3 in a 5 mile stretch of road.

We did get one day of kayaking in, putting the kayaks in right at the boat ramp, on the KOA property.  Beautiful day and we saw some wildlife - lots of birds, a turtle and river otters.  Such a peaceful trip down the sloughs.  The KOA property is shared with the business that runs the marina and boat storage along with a Yacht sales company, Ice Cream Shop, Restaurant and Canvas repair company.  There was watercraft of all sizes, houseboats, yachts, boats of all sizes, kayak rentals, etc.

River Otters

KOA store and office by the marina.  

Marina at the park 

One of about 12 plus boat storage areas.  

Next time we'll definitely want to visit more wineries and consider visiting the town of Livermore, CA, a town where John Madden's development company is building retail space, and the company is being ran by John's son, Mike.  We also had the recommendation to try Yorkville Cellars while visiting the town.  Also, next time through the Fresno area, we would like to see the Forestiere Underground Gardens.

On Monday, May 2, we headed north to stay in another membership park, Lake Minden in Nicolaus,  CA.