Mount Shasta Trip

For New Year’s day, we decided to make a nice drive to Mt. Shasta City. The trip takes about an hour or so, and along the way are some spectacular views.

Even though we took this photo on the way back, this view of Shasta Dam is about twenty minutes from our driveway. The dam was built between the late 30s and early 40s, and basically keeps our house dry by holding back the Sacramento river. It also has a nice view of the mountain in the background.

One slightly disturbing fact from the Wikipedia article:

If one drives over the road built on the damface, one can also see Mount Shasta, a dormant stratovolcano. The state of California (with some Federal help) has seismically retrofitted the dam with a stainless-steel armature on the lake-side. Should Shasta Volcano come alive, and in the worst possible case, the state would have to flood and evacuate the Sacramento Valley in a planned and responsible manner.

Bummer.

Along I-5 Northward, we soon pass Shasta Lake (the result of the dam). It’s a large, sprawling lake that is apparently popular with houseboats. Our brother-in-law Mike does a lot of fishing on this lake.

Closer to Mount Shasta are the Castle Crags, a unique rock formation that sort of reminded us of something out of The Lord of the Rings. Just picture Saruman standing on the cliff there.

After about another twenty minutes from Castle Crags, we arrive at Mt. Shasta City, elevation about 4000 feet. There is a good amount of snow at this altitude, and by the amount of people out and about it seems this was the nicest weather they’d had in a while.

The temperature was in the mid 40s, which is about 20 degrees cooler than what we had in the valley just about an hour ago.

Even though we’re very close and higher in elevation to Mt. Shasta at this point–it still juts up over 10,000 feet, commanding the surrounding terrain. Photos just cannot do the sight justice!

We ate lunch at a nicely decorated local restaurant called “Lily’s”. After that, we made our trip back. By that point Ethan was ready to get out of the car, and we had delayed back taking down the Christmas lights one more time!