Grants Pass, OR

We arrived in Grants Pass on Monday, May 16, and was surprised to hear that our friends from Illinois were already checked into a hotel in Grants Pass and only about 1/2 mile from the RV Park.  We enjoyed playing dominoes on Monday night.  We stayed in Grants Pass in a small park called Rogue Valley Overnighters.  They had a couple of spaces that were long and met all of our needs, it's just the road system in the park is a little tight.  They also had a visitor that Lexie met by the dog walk, which gave me a good excuse not to have to walk her there.

Tuesday, we decided to drive up to Crater Lake and it was absolutely a beautiful day.  Clyde (Craig's first boss at Caterpillar in 1973) and Helen had not been to Crater Lake.  This was our fourth trip and we enjoy it each and everytime we've been there.

On Wednesday we spent the day in Medford catching up on some shopping we needed before heading back to Chehalis.  We then spent the afternoon of Thursday in Ashland.  I had been to the Shakespeare Theatre when I was in High School.  We spent the afternoon walking around the town as we did not make arrangements for tickets to the theatre.

Ashland Springs Hotel

On our way back to Grants Pass we hit a couple of wineries:

Paschal:

Decorative Engine at Paschal

EdenVale: This winery is located on the oldest commercial orchard land in Oregon.  The 1890's mansion is used for special events and the wine tasting room is in the historic Carriage House.

Saturday, my brother needed some downtime from truck driving, so he spent the day with us before he headed south on Sunday.  We took Lexie to a self pet wash and then drove around downtown Grants Pass.  We discovered that they had painted bears everywhere throughout the downtown and below is just a very small sampling of some of their bears.

Sunday we spent the day in Jacksonville, OR.  We took the Trolley ride to hear the history of the town and then walked around the main street area, taking in two of the wineries.  For anyone who hasn't been in this southern Oregon area, there are so many wineries to include many on the Applegate Wine Trail that runs through Jacksonville.  

Jacksonville is an 1850's gold rush town, with gold being discovered in 1851 and the city was started with the name of Table Rock City.  In 1884 the railroad bypassed the town, running closer to Medford and the city slowly dwindled, along with experiencing three fires that wiped out many of their buildings.  Jacksonville was named to honor President Jackson.  The town is a National Historic Landmark town with over 100 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.  The town is also now known for their music festivals and wine.  

We visited the Umpqua Valley Winery which had mostly whites and Pinot Noirs and then we went to Quady North, who was doing a red flight of 5 different Syrahs.  There wines were full bodied reds and the winemaker's wife does the artwork for the labels which were really quite different.

Monday, we headed north to Salem for a couple of days and then on Wednesday we will head north to our leased spot in Chehalis.

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.