Dam good day

Day 87

Roused from our slumber in the parking lot at Whiskeytown recreation area we packed up for the days adventure. Down the road lay Shasta dam. This is the second largest dam in the US. Now I know what you're thinking, Hoover is #1. Well that would make you stupid. I'm stupid... I thought so too. It turns out that dam size is figured out by concrete volume. Look at the picture above and wrap your little bird brain around this. The dam is 602 feet tall and is 3,460 feet  long, with a maximum thickness of 543 feet; altogether the dam contains 6,270,000 cubic yards of concrete. Built bewtween 1937 and 1945 this bad boy had people working around the clock to lay concrete to build it. Luckily for us this place offers free tours. That's awesome... because we are cheap.

The tour was exactly what we had hoped. They took us inside the dam to display the giant hydro electric generators that were spinning with a harmonious noise. Apparently still pictures are fine... but recording videos is a no-no.  If you listen close to the end of the movie you'll hear the lady ask me to turn it off. 

I love this stuff. The engineering and hard work that went into making these dreams reality is riveting. There are two, yes two, 125 ton cranes built into the walls. These generators were meant to run forever and they put the parts in place to make sure that happened. 

The concrete here is still curing. They project that it will be fully hardened by 2045. After that the lifespan clock starts to tick. With this amazing tour out of the way it was time for us to move on. Back towards Redding we went and there was one more stop before getting back to the RV. Sometimes you see stuff you don't expect while you drive. Like a truck packed full of wood with no straps. 

So back to our trip. There is a cantilever sundial bridge leaning over the Sacramento river that begs to be seen.

The sundial bridge was cool. However the price tag was not. Wait for it... 23.5 million dollars. There's a lot more things the city could have done with that money. I'd suggest get all the homeless bums off the streets. 
With the day wrapped up we finally headed home. It was late in the afternoon and we still needed to get Eli out for a stretch. We found a quick 5 mile trail and took the old boy for a walk. 

The walk turned out to be more than I bargained for. Katie got it in her head that she should dig the seeds out of a pine cone and grow some trees. This is my life. This is what I deal with.