Travel Summary

It was a fun 6 months. Three maps showing a summary of my travels and stops are included below. I drove east across the Southern United States and up the East Coast (Map 1), drove west across the Northern United States and Southern Canada (Map 2), and then south along the West Coast of Washington, Oregon and Northern California before returning home (Map 3).

Home Again

I had a great time driving around the country without any responsibilities! Now that I'm back home, it's time to get back to everyday life again -- until my next trip. 😀

I had a fantastic time and am thankful for all the family, friends, and good people I met and interacted with along the way.

It was nice to be able to fix breakfast in my own kitchen this morning!

Today is national election day. I made it home in time yesterday to catch up on the election candidates and ballot measures, and I voted today!

I put together my trip statistics while watching the election returns tonight.

For trip statistics, see Final Statistics.

For daily posts by date, see ARCHIVE of Posts.

"ARCHIVE of Posts", "Maps", "Car Setup", "Plan", and "Final Statistics" are also available using the links on the right side of this page. My stops exceeded the maximum locations supported by Google Maps, so I had to divide my travels into 3 maps (Part1, Part 2, and Part 3).

The Final Leg -- Redding to Rocklin, CA (Epilogue post will follow)

It is with mixed emotions that I drive the final leg of this trip back to my home in Rocklin. It has been an amazing adventure, and I've seen a lot of beautiful places and met a lot of wonderful people.

When deciding my route for this final leg, I thought about driving through Lassen National Park, but the highway through the park is already closed for the season due to snow.

Since the Lassen route is no longer an option, I took a pretty straight route home: I-5 from Redding to Red Bluff,  highways 99 and 70 through Chico to Yuba City and Marysville, and highway 65 through Roseville to I-80 to Rocklin.

I arrived home just before sunset. When I got home, the elapsed time calculation on my website showed 179 days 11 hours since I started my trip... just shy of 6 months!

I was greeted by some neighbors after I pulled into my driveway. They welcomed me home and gave me an update on some neighborhood news. I also visited my neighbors who have been holding my mail and kept my houseplant alive while I was gone.

I'll write an epilogue blog post with some trip totals tomorrow. In the mean time, I need to do a little grocery shopping tonight, and catch up on ballot measures and candidates before I vote tomorrow.

Sunday Church, Tour of Shasta Dam, Walk across Redding's Sundial Bridge

-- Sunday Church --

I attended church at the LDS church in the town of Shasta Lake this morning. The Shasta Lake Ward is one of the friendliest congregations I have met with on this vacation! They gave me a very warm welcome. A good number of the members introduced themselves to me and told me they were glad I was there.

One of the women introduced herself as Paivi, which I recognized as a Finnish name. She's said she is not Finnish, but her father did missionary work in Finland, just like I did many years ago. He served a decade or two before me, and in different cities, but it was fun talking with him.

Today was the monthly testimony meeting. Everyone who spoke was open with their experiences, down to earth, and I enjoyed listening to them. If I'm ever in the area again on a Sunday, I wouldn't hesitate to visit this ward again.

-- Shasta Dam --

After church, I drove to Shasta Dam and took the dam tour. Since I skipped visiting Hoover Dam near the beginning of my vacation, this was a fitting thing to do near the end. I enjoyed talking with the visitor center staff after my tour, and as one of them pointed out, the Shasta Dam tour is free, whereas the Hoover Dam parking is $10 and the tours are $15 to $30.

Shasta Dam has 15 million tons of concrete, which they say will take around 100 years to cure. Since the dam was constructed between 1938 and 1945, the concrete will be curing for several more years! It is the second largest concrete dam in the country -- second only to the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington.

The Shasta Dam is on the Sacramento River. The water is used both for hydroelectric power and for downstream irrigation in the California's central valley. 

Mount Shasta is visible from the dam. The dam has a capacity of 4.5 million acre feet of water. I was told the water level is at about 57% of capacity right now.

Looking over the top of the dam in the downstream direction, the spillway and the 5 penstock pipes that feed water to the the hydroelectric turbines can be seen in the photos below. In the second photo, the electrical wires from the dam to the power distribution area are visible above the water.

We met for the tour at the base of the second tower, near the top of the spillway. The plaque on the wall outside the tower entrance reminds us for whom the dam was built. 😀

 

The guard and tour guide unlocked the door. We had to empty our pockets and go through a metal detector before entering the dam. We then took a one minute elevator ride down to the tunnel pictured below. The tunnel shows how thick the dam is -- at one end is the lake, and the other end is the downstream side of the dam.

We emerged from the tunnel and walked outside to look up at the spillway. The spillway holes for releasing water are 8 feet in diameter! A few of the valves leak, and could use some maintenance, but they don't leak drastically. 

Our tour guide stood in front of a diagram that describes the basic workings of the dam. If the dam needs to release water but doesn't need to produce hydroelectric power, valves are opened in the spillway, allowing water to release. If the dam gets too full and water is nearing the top, there are 3 gates at the top of the spillway that can be opened to release water and keep that dam from overfilling.

To produce hydroelectric power, water is released into penstock pipes instead of being released onto the spillway. There are 5 penstock pipes. One or more can be opened, depending on how much power needs to be generated. The pipes feed the water to the 5 turbines that turn power generating coils.

The target temperature for release water is somewhere around 50 degrees. The water needs to be cool for the salmon and other fish that live in the river. King salmon swim upstream on the Sacramento river to spawn.

Below is a photo of the 5 penstock pipes that feed the generators. To give an idea of their size, our tour guide told us each pipe is large enough that a bus could be driven through it.

Next we went into the power generation room. Only one of the five generators was turning and generating power when we were there. A state power authority sets the schedule for generating power, deciding how many generators to activate and at what times, for each dam in the California.

A large hoist on rollers, high in the room, has hooks for lifting and doing maintenance on the generators. The generators actually produce twice as much power as they originally produced when they were first installed, due to more efficient windings on the generator coils.  

Below are closeups of one of the General Electric generators and its coil. Water spins  a  turbine, which is connected by a shaft to the generator coil. When the turbine spins, so does the coil, and the spinning coil produces electricity.

Frank Crowe, the man who was in charge of constructing Hoover Dam, was also in charge of constructing Shasta Dam. Many of the 4,700 construction workers working on Shasta Dam had previously worked on Hoover Dam. Rocks needed for the concrete were excavated from downstream on the Sacramento River, and carried to the worksite on the  10 mile conveyor belt pictured below.

  

During dam construction, the river water had to be temporarily diverted into a diversion tunnel while the base of the dam was prepared and the concrete poured. An existing train tunnel was used for the diversion tunnel. The train tracks were rerouted to go around what would become Lake Shasta, as they otherwise would have been under water after the dam was built.

The far end of the diversion tunnel has been blocked, and the tunnel is currently used as a storage room.

 

The dam tour was very worthwhile. Afterwards, I watched a movie of the dam construction in the visitor center, and then talked with some of the staff.

-- Sundial Bridge --

The Sundial Bridge is a footbridge that spans the Sacramento river in Redding. It is a beautiful bridge that actually works as a sundial. The tower points north, and the shadow can actually be used to mark time during the Summer months.  

No part of the bridge touches the water, and the walkway is transparent glass. This lets light pass through the bridge and causes minimal disturbance to the fish below. Chinook salmon, also known as King salmon, swim upstream on the river to spawn.

Tension on the cables from the tower to the walkway helps hold the bridge up, and eliminates the need for footings in the water.

Along one of the banks, a tile arc on the ground has round markers identifying the time of  day the sundial's shadow will pass that point on the ground at Summer solstice. The markers are for times between 11 am - 3 pm. The photo below shows the point the shadow will cross at 1:15 pm on June 21 of each year. When visible and moving across the tile arc, the shadow moves about one foot per minute.

I'll be spending the night at the Redding Winco again tonight. Tomorrow I'll head home to Rocklin so I can vote on Tuesday. Otherwise, I would probably stay out for a few more days.

Arcata Farmers Market, Cal Poly Humbolt, Bigfoot Museum, Historic Shasta, Redding

I spent the morning at the Saturday Farmers Market in Arcata. Arcata is a few miles north of Eureka. Arcata is also the home of California State Polytechnic University's Humboldt campus (Cal Poly, Humboldt, for short).

The farmers market is held on Saturday mornings in a big square in the middle of town. There are lots of vendors and it is very well attended. Besides fresh produce, several vendors sell prepared food. I bought a plate of pierogies and a blueberry pastry from a couple of the food vendors. Both were really good!

Besides the food, people socialize and children play on the grass. The event has a really fun atmosphere. It is a nice social and community event.

I don't remember ever seeing purple baby cauliflower before today. I also learned about Micro Greens today from one of the vendors. Micro Greens are like sprouts but are grown in soil. They are packed with nutrients. Varieties included sunflower, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and peas, among others. Micro Greens seem to be trending, as there were at least a couple of booths today dedicated to selling them.

I checked out a few brick and mortar stores around the square. I saw these stuffed animals shaped like banana slugs and a "Hello" badge I like in one of the stores. I also took a photo of a display of hats in the downtown Cal Poly store, before taking a walk on the nearby University campus.

After visiting Arcata, my plan for the day was to leave the coast and drive inland to Redding. My route passed through Willow Springs, which is the location of many alleged bigfoot sightings and encounters. I hoped to visit the Bigfoot Museum, but found that it is closed for the season. It is closed from Nov 1 until May 1, so I missed it by two days!

I stopped by the museum anyway, and compared my feet to a cast of an alleged bigfoot footprint. It's no surprise that Bigfoot has me outsized.

The Fall colors are on full display today in Willow Springs. 

Highway 299 parallels the Trinity River much of the way to Redding, until the road climbs up and over the mountains near Whiskeytown Lake.

One of the tiny towns the highway passes is named "Burnt Ranch". Below is a photo of its post office. How do you like "Burnt Ranch" for the name of a town? I wonder what year the ranch burned down! According to the 2020 census, Burnt Ranch's population is about 250.

I also stopped to see the historical buildings on the side of the higway in the Shasta State Historical Park. Shasta was a goldmining boom town. Gold was discovered in nearby Clear Creek in 1848. The town was originally called "Reading Springs", named  after Pierson Reading, the man who disovered the gold. The name was later changed to Shasta. When the local gold ran out, Shasta became a supply outpost for some of the more distant northern gold mines.

Shasta's first buildings were made of wood, and later ones were made of brick. Many of the original wood buildings burned in fires.

The brick Masonic Lodge building pictured below, the Western Star Lodge, has been in use since 1854. It is the longest continuously operating Masonic Lodge in California. It makes me want to learn more about whatever role Masons played in western U.S. history.

The  historic town of Shasta is just a few miles west of Redding. I ate dinner at one of the In-N-Out Burger restaurants in Redding, and will find a place to park and sleep for the night.

I am surprised how many people are out wandering the streets late at night, or hanging out in parking lots. I decided the Winco parking lot might not be a bad place to spend the night, since the store is open 24 hours and the parking lot is well lit. I had no issues sleeping there.