San Francisco with the Family

My Great Aunts granddaughter lives in Sacramento and she was up from Texas for a visit this week. I caught up with them in San Francisco for a Duck tour of the city and lunch on Fishermans Wharf.


Can you tell we are related.. Mom's aunt. Explains a lot! : )

Reflections of Yosemite

Rachel and I went to Yosemite for my second time in a month. My first two months in CA were so dry it only rained once! Jess and I went to Yosemite Oct 8th and there was NO water in Yosemite falls. It has rained twice since then and I got some good shots of the falls!

If you have a snapfish account...the other 5000 pictures are on here... see now 472 doesn't sound as bad! : )

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1611121016/a=9811377_9811377/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/


















the porch at the Wawona Hotel where we stayed inside the park

What a Strange weekend...

First I wander into Bumpass Hell and then I take a dam tour at Lake Shasta!!

It was fun!! Alot of driving as usual!!

Lassen Volcanic National Park is apparently another active Geothermal area in the US!! I shouldn't be surprised considering the plate tectonics out here in CA!! But hey I grew up thinking Yellowstone was the only place in the continental US with geysers, fumeroles and mudpots!!

I know of tons of hotsprings...but never that stuff!! : )

http://www.nps.gov/lavo/planyourvisit/index.htm

I didn't study volcanoes much in school. They had an interesting display at the visitors center. The park has examples of all four types of volcanoes.



Fumeroles at Bumpass Hell...trust me it smelled like boiled eggs...there is a reason they are called fumeroles!!

Lassen Peak

Vulcans eye on Lassen Peak

I got my Aspen fix!!

Sunset coming out of the park

By the end of the day I was driving in the dark through an X- Files scene! Then through the trees I see this sign on the side of the road! I was expecting deer maybe...but cow?? Yup definitely and X FILES scene!




Hey! What are those things in the sky? Beautiful at sunrise!!

Lake Shasta Dam

Apparently the second largest Dam in the country...It has the second most amount of Concrete. A Dam in Washington has more!! Hoover Dam is like 4 or 5 on the list!! That surprised me!!

Others visiting the dam early!

So a town or two disappeared when they built the dam... but the dam does supply energy to most of the West coast and mid portion of the US. The dam was paid off in 1988 and it MAKES money every year since then!

Shasta Mountain! A fourteener in Northern CA!

We can't walk over the Kensico Dam in NY but we can enter the hydro electric plant at the dam in CA that supplies energy to most of the US...ok...I get it???? NOT!!