Sunday 10 July 2005

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

Awake: 6:05am Temp 72 Mostly sunny Overnight @ Redding, CA

During Kathy’s dips in the campground pool last week, she listened to Gene
& Jo talk about their tour of the nearby Shasta Dam & Power plant….& now
my curiosity is up.

Although we are very busy, we’ll make an exception. Kathy calls the Shasta
Dam visitor’s center & we choose a 10:15am tour time. A 20 min drive from
our campground & we are soon looking at this marvel of engineering before
us, the Shasta lake, dam & power plant.

This project started in 1938….was operational in 1950. At the visitor’s
center, we had time to watch a movie on the “Bureau of Reclamation” in
their theater before walking half way across the dam’s breast to meet our
tour guide. This guy is good; he knows his facts, has a sense of humor &
is very personable. We take the elevator down inside the dam…174 ft or 43
stories. Temp @ the bottom floor was 65 degrees; 85 degrees outside on the
breast of the dam. For being over 55 yrs of age, this place looks well
cared for.

Now all 11 of us are in a long 100 ft + hallway & our tour guide asks us
to form teams: each team will take turns in clapping their hands in
unison, listen to the echo & determine if all hands were in sync. It was
right out of the science books: sound travels @ some 650 ft per sec
depending on temperature. We could easily detect some early & late
clappers.

We tour a little inside the power plant, and then out along the spillway.
This Shasta Dam not only produces enough electricity to power all of San
Francisco but also controls floodwaters & stores surplus winter runoff for
irrigation use in California’s central valley.

We thank our tour guide profusely & walk back to the visitor’s center
where we watch 2 more movies on the dam construction process. It was well
worth our time to experience this diamond hidden in the valley of the
hills.

8:15 dinner: Italian roast beef with potatoes & peppers, Caesar salad &
garlic toast.
Today’s high temp=90 Lights out: 11:16pm

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://blogs.kirsch.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1506

Leave a comment

Categories

Monthly Archives

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by George Monte Kirsch published on July 13, 2005 7:53 AM.

Saturday 9 July 2005 was the previous entry in this blog.

Monday 11 July 2005 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.