Sonya's Blog - Day 298 - Whiskeytown Lake and Shasta Dam

Sonya’ s Blog - Day 298 - April 15th - Whiskeytown Lake and Shasta Dam

We are going to visit Whiskeytown Lake this morning. The reason that it is called Whiskeytown Lake is that the whole town was buried beneath the lake when they dammed the river. It was about a 1/2 hour drive, or so, from our campsite. We checked out the Visitor’s Centre first, so that we could figure out where we should go and explore. There was a nice, shorter hike, down on the edge of the lake near the campground area. Off we went. It was a beautiful little trail and it took us right to the water’s edge. Kizmet absolutely loved the water, but then she kept trying to dive off the trail to get back into it, when we were just walking along. It was a tad annoying. The lake is very clear and I saw a pretty big fish jump out of the water. While we were on the water’s edge, Isaac was goofing around with a stick and I saw a very large black spider crawling around on the back of his sweater. I told Blake (who was standing closer) to swat it off before Isaac freaked out. Isaac figured that Blake was just hitting him for no good reason, because this happens a lot! Anyhow, he finally believed us, about the large spider, and then was freaked out anyhow! Ah well. We walked up the path for a bit more and then headed back to the truck.

Some pictures:

Natasha and Kizmet enjoying Whiskeytown Lake:

Isaac was fascinated by the large pine cones, he found a small pine cone to compare it to:

Looking stunned:

We drove though the old town of Shasta, which had quite a few ruins that you could check out. It is a ghost town, but there was a bakery that was operational. We decided to visit the bakery to get a snack for the drive home. We each tried something different and everything was super tasty.

We went back to the RV for lunch and then headed out to Shasta Dam in the afternoon. We had to drive through the town of Shasta Lake to get to the dam. It was a quite a windy, twisty road to get to the dam, but we eventually made it. It is a very large dam and when it was built it was the second largest in the world, next to Hoover Dam. It was built during the latter years of the Great Depression, with construction continuing on into the war years. Due to the war, the height of the dam had to be changed from 800 feet to about 600 feet. It was pretty impressive and we enjoyed our walk along the dam. This dam did not ban dogs, like Hoover Dam did, so Kizmet had a nice stroll across the dam with us. Blake and Isaac went into the Visitor’s Centre when we were done our walk, to ask about water volumes and other nerdy type questions. Natasha had gone in with them, but soon both kids were outside with me while Blake and the guy that worked their nerded it our talking about the dam and capacities and whatever else they covered. It was a beautiful day, so Kizmet and I enjoyed the sunshine outside.

Beside the dam, overlooking Shasta Lake:

Shasta Dam:

Isaac figures he would survive water sliding down this thing, I think not:

Taking our Dam stroll, ha:

Once we returned to the RV we had supper. Blake and Isaac headed off to the hot tub again, while Natasha and I stayed back and read our books.

Sonya