Sonya's Blog - Day 297 - The Sundial Bridge

Sonya’s Blog - Day 297 - April 14th - Redding, California and the Sundial Bridge

Another rainy day, but it is supposed to clear up after lunch sometime. The kids continued on with their studies, Blake with his job hunt and I spent the time reading and doing laundry.

After lunch, once the sun had come out, we drove into Redding. They have a famous bridge in Redding, which is called the Sundial Bridge. It is the largest sundial in the world and was designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava. I didn’t know who this guy was either, but he is super famous in the architect community. Unbeknownst to us, we have seen his work before. He designed the World Trade Centre PATH station, which we walked through while we were in New York, as our train took us there. He has designed tons of high profile things, like the Athens Olympic Stadium, and agreed to design this bridge for Redding when some of the members of the organizing committee called him up and asked him to do it. That was really all it took, one phone call. They called his office and Santiago himself answered the phone, the threw out what they wanted and he sent 3 designs out to them months later. It has help to put Redding on the map of places to see, especially with those who are interested in architecture. Now, we knew nothing about this bridge prior to our arrival, so we are not in that category. Since we are here, it would be a shame not to check it out.

We parked at the McConnell Arboretum and walked through the gardens to get to the bridge. We didn’t think that Kizmet would be allowed in the Arboretum, but they were good with it. They had lovely gardens and it was a nice stroll through them on our way to see the bridge.

The bridge was pretty magnificent. We had a nice walk across it and got lots of pictures. It was very controversial when it was built, but most people have gotten over it and appreciate the bridge. There are a few people in Redding, who objected to the building of it and the price it cost, who have never been to it and never will, just on principal. I looked into the cost and the controversies and thought about Calgary’s own Peace Bridge and all the controversy around the building of that bridge. Well, it turns out the Peace Bridge and The Sundial Bridge have more in common than I thought. Total cost of the Sundial Bridge: $24 Million. Total cost of the Peace Bridge: $25 Million. Oh, architect hired to design the Peace Bridge: Santiago Calatrava - who knew?? I guess I have seen his work more than once. I had no idea it was the same architect when I started on my little information quest.

Here are our pictures:

The largest sundial in the world:

I guess a zamboni cleans the bridge every day to keep the surface nice and clean:

The bridge is over Turtle Bay, on the Sacramento River:

We spent about an hour exploring the bridge and the area around the bridge. We then walked back through the Arboretum and took some different paths. We saw some cool stuff. We really like the gardens that had a lot of different artists works.

Some pictures:

This sculpture depicts all the different flora and fauna of California:

Blake on Charlotte's Bridge, notice all the spiders:

It was time for supper, so we headed back to the RV. We had to stop at the grocery store first, to pick up a few extra ingredients. When that was done, we headed back to camp and Natasha and I made supper. The boys went to the hot tub while we were preparing supper, so they were pretty lucky! Nothing else too exciting happened after that.

Sonya