Thursday July 3, 2014


Travel Day
                                                                         

Because we only had a short distance to drive today we took our time packing up and hitting the road this morning . We headed west on CA Rt. 44 and then north on CA Rt. 89 to McCloud CA and our campground for several days. The drive started off with a 2 mile climb at a 6% grade, which we made ok, and after that it was a beautiful drive through forests of Ponderosa Pine. Around noon we stopped at McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, which was highly recommended to us as a must see, the main attraction at the park is a fantastic waterfall. The overlook provides a wonderful viewing point, but to fully appreciate the falls you need to take the trail to the bottom, not only is there a tremendous amount of water cascading over the falls but there are numerous points in the rock face below the upper river flow where water is escaping from between the rock layers which create the effect of a veil across the cliff face. It is truly beautiful; neither of us have seen this effect before. After viewing the falls we took a 1 mile hike that took us downstream, across the river and up the other side to another bridge to cross back to the parking lot. Being a holiday weekend the campground is full of families and there are kids everywhere, it is great to see everyone having fun. After setting up camp we went to visit a high school friend of Jack’s and her husband, for dinner and some great conversation. It was great being able to reunite with them after so many years.