Redding - Day 2

So we planned to get up by 9:15am to get our day started. So I did, and got ready to go. There was a group of turkeys outside my bedroom window when I got up. That was different. We (my Aunt, cousin Don, his wife Pam, her friend Cookie, and I) drove out to the Shasta Caverns tour area on Lake Shasta. There were a ton of kids there when we arrived. We were told that there were 2 groups of kids that were going to fill up the next 2 tours at 11:30am and Noon. So we decided to buy tickets for the 1pm boat and just hang out and wait. We got a hot dog, wandered the gift shop, hung out at a picnic table, then headed down to the boat at 12:45pm. It was a quick 15 min ride across the lake, then a steep climb up a hill to catch the bus. Then it was a quick trip to the entrance to the cavern.

There was a guy on our tour with a Team Canada Crosby shirt on which made me laugh. We entered the caverns which were 72 degrees inside, which was much better than the 106 outside. We passed a very steep and long set of stairs and thought we weren't going to have to climb them. Well, we were wrong. After we viewed the first couple of rooms, we came full circle and had to climb the 800 steps to the top. Yikes. But well worth it to see all the magnificent rooms once we got up there. It seemed right out of Indiana Jones. We were in there for about an hour, and then exited the caverns at a higher elevation, and had to climb down a crap load of stairs once on the outside. We hopped back on the bus, then boat to get back to our car.

We headed back to the house to take cold showers (super hot outside) and relax and have dinner. Don BBQ'd pork steaks (as they called them) and had some pasta and veggies. We just killed some time before heading to the Sundial Bridge. We wanted to see what it looked like at night as well as the day. And it was beautiful all lit up at night. Really a sight. We wandered around there for an hour or so. Then we stopped on the way home for some ice cream bars and wine.

My Aunt and Pam were ready for bed after a glass of wine, but I wasn't. So I stayed up a while longer an watched a couple of TV episodes on my iPod before crashing.