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.