Flutterby™! : First/Last oregon trip

I'm posting these backwards in small chunks, this should be the first chronologically, although I am going to have a few out of sequence, like a "Covered Bridges of Lane County" entry. To see the whole thing in sequence (kinda), you can check out the November 2003 Oregon Trip topic once it's all posted.

North I-5 in the fading light, just shy of Willows. We're aiming for Redding as a place to stop for the night because we want to drive 299 over the mountains while we've got light, to see the scenery. So we've got a little time to kill. We've tried driving through Williams, but the only thing of interest we saw there was a place where old buses apparently go to die, so we're still looking about for anything interesting in this flat central valley, when Charlene spots a brown sign that says "Wildlife Viewing Area".

It's the Delevan wildlife viewing area, a part of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex. They have a driving loop. I think "how cheesey and touristy is this going to be", but it turns out that the car makes an effective blind, and the road is through the marshes in a way that makes the viewing spectacular. The area is on part of the migration flyway, and there are gobs of birds of all sorts of different colors and shapes. We resolve to come back sometime when we have more time.

Day Two. 299 east out of Redding, up into the northern end of the Sierra, or the southern end of the Cascades, I'm not really sure (but by the middle of the trip I've discovered reason to find out). We're tooling along through hillsides and small towns, along a river, when all of a sudden on the right this structure appears. I think it's a gold stamping mill, left over from the days of the rush.

As we climb up the hills it's plain that we're in logging country, but this area looks a little too logged out. Sure enough, we find one of those blue "Scenic Vista" signs and there's a kiosk in a new stand of trees talking about a big fire up here back in 1993.

At Burney we take a left to travel down 89 for a bit, for a stop at McArthur Burney State Park, home of Burney Falls, a 129 foot high set of waterfalls nestled in a canyon carved from the basalt. The varied rocks layered through the falls, and some of the interesting fields get us started in discussions about geology. Little did we know. It's also starting to get cold up here...