Shasta Dam

We laid in bed and watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate

Factory before bed last night and Oscar now says lumpa, lumpa, lumpa over and over again.  Hey, we’re learning a lot of new words on this trip and again, not very useful ones.  But he did say, “hungry” the other day and that’s a huge step in the right direction of communication.  I did some research on things to do here and we have plans to see the Sundial

bridge and Shasta Dam today.  We head out to the restaurant that our hotel has partnered with for breakfast, Lumberjacks.  And a breakfast cooked by cooks instead of a stale bagel and froot loops in a twirly canister is like heaven.  I told John that maybe we should stay another night just to avoid having to look for another hotel somewhere else and to have another good breakfast before leaving for Sacramento.  Why don’t more hotels do this?  We ended up spending money at the restaurant and we enjoyed it immensely and we’re going to end up spending more money in the town and at the hotel because

we’re staying extra. It’s a win-win.  We get in the car and head out to Shasta Dam and we’re not expecting much, but come around another curve (of course you have to go up a hilly, twisting road to get there, it’s northern California) and see the dam ahead with Mt. Shasta looming in the distance and it takes your breath away.  One, the dam is huge.  It says it’s the 8^th largest but there is something about it that seems even more

impressive than Hoover.  John looks at me like I’m crazy when I say this, but it just got more and more impressive.  It wasn’t hard to get to, you could just walk out to the dam and look at Lake Shasta, look over the railing of the dam and get freaked out from the amazing height.  They had to open the top doors a couple of weeks ago to make sure that they’re

functioning well because the dam is at 96% capacity right now and that’s probably what makes it feel so impressive.  I make the mistake of telling Oscar that it looks like the world’s biggest slide and he says that he wants to go down it.  It does look like a slide, but not one that we’ll be taking.  We head back to the hotel for siesta after picking up some lunch.