Tours Travel

Doggin ‘Shasta and the Rogue River: 15 cool things to see while walking with your dog

“If your dog is fat,” the old saying goes, “you’re not getting enough exercise.” But walking the dog doesn’t have to be just a little exercise. Here are 15 cool things you can see in Northern California and Southern Oregon while walking your dog.

WONDERS OF ENGINEERING.

Between the town of Dairy and the Sprague River, on OC&E Traily, you will pass a strange-looking section on a hill. This is a

double zigzag railway, which allowed to divide the trains to navigate the hill. The original plans called for a tunnel through Bly Mountain, but since funding was low, it was decided that the cheapest double-change solution was good enough. Before the railroad closed in 1990, this unique engineering milestone was the last of its kind in the United States.

FASCINATING BIRDS.

Lake Shasta is a popular nesting ground for bald eagles, offering a chance to watch them hunt and nest in the wild. At McCloud Falls, keep an eye out for little American Dipper birds patrolling the choppy waters. These tiny birds, also known as water ouzels, buzz above the surface and dive in and out of the cascading water in search of food. They use their wings to “fly” underwater and can even be seen walking at the bottom of the stream pecking for insect larvae, fish eggs, and even slow fish as if they were walking down the trail.

TASTING FRESH WATER.

Tub Springs was a popular stopping point for travelers on the Applegate Trail to cool off with a cold drink of fresh mountain water from the hot tub springs. You can still do it today. A stone water feature at Hedge Creek Falls dispenses “the best water in the world,” according to Dunsmuir residents. You can try and judge it for yourself at the gazebo at the top of the trail.

GOLD.

People have come to the Shasta / Rogue River Valley for 150 years in search of gold and it probably isn’t all gone. You can rent a skillet for $ 1 and chase gold in the creeks in the Whiskeytown Recreation Area. Before 1900, the city of Redding operated a gold mine in Blue Gravel Canyon, the only city in California to do so. The mine is gone, of course, but the trail remains and it has relics from the gold age along the way. Did they get all the gold here?

LARGE DAMS.

The Shasta Dam opened in 1945 and flooded 35 miles of the Sacramento River Valley. One of the largest dams ever conceived when construction began in 1938, the construction of the Shasta Dam set several “world records.” Among them was the Southern Pacific Railroad double-decker bridge that was the tallest ever built and the construction of the longest conveyor system in the world, 10.5 miles, to bring sand and aggregates to the construction site from Redding. The water that spilled over the Shasta Dam created the largest man-made waterfall ever seen, three times higher than the fall at Niagara Falls. Trinity Dam, rising 466 feet from the bedrock, is one of the tallest earth-filled dams in the world.

HISTORICAL BUILDINGS.

Fire has taken over many old buildings in the West, but there are still some important wooden buildings standing in the desert. In Trinity Recreation Area is the Bowerman Barn, carefully constructed with wooden dowels and one of the most representative 19th century handcrafted structures in California. Also in the park is the original Stoddard Farm log home, just off the Stoddard Trail. At Ah-Di-Na Campground in Siskiyou County, canine hikers can study a historic cabin that was restored by volunteers in 1990 using only traditional tools like long axes and chisels.

INTERESTING TREES.

At TouVelle State Recreation Site is one of the largest barn trees in southern Oregon. A barn tree is a special tree that acorn woodpeckers go to to store food. This ponderosa pine is estimated to have up to 50,000 holes! On the Blue Canyon Trail you can see a tree where Judge John Waldo of Salem, Oregon and his group charted the route that is now Pacific Crest Trail, becoming the first to cross the ridge of the South Cascades in 1888.

LOFTY VIEWPOINTS.

Mountain trails often culminate at Forest Service lookouts with spectacular views. In Medicine Lake, Hoffman Lookout was built for fire watch in 1924 and started out as a small 8-foot-square. cabin. The cabin is available to rent ((530) 964-2184) and is quite popular. Herd Peak Lookout sits east of the main Cascade fault line, overlooking a magnificent hilly valley created from pyroclastic lava flows off Mount Shasta. During the fire season, the lookout is manned from 9:30 am to 9 pm, and the person in charge will be sitting in the tower watching the valley, ready to report any sign of fire to firefighters by radio. The rustic Marble Valley Guard Station, completed in 1928, is an early example of simple stations built by the Forest Service as fire watches. Trail crews and rangers still work in Marble Valley today, still with little concession to modern conveniences. The guard station is reached by a difficult climb at the junction of trails PC 2000 and 11W014, about 2.5 miles southwest of Lover’s Camp Trailhead.

FALLING OF HERITAGE.

You can’t leave a dog walk at Collier Memorial State Park without a greater appreciation for the logging industry. Trails through the open-air museum wind from the days of oxen and hand axes to the era of steam and today’s diesel

machines. Here you will also find railway heritage. Look for an old Baldwin steam locomotive known, more or less affectionately, as GOP – “Get Out And Push”. The engine was trying so hard to haul redwood logs in and out of the mountains that it was constantly derailing.

MYTHICAL CREATURES.

On the hike to the top of Collings Mountain, you will find the world’s only known Bigfoot trap. Constructed of wood with a heavy metal door reinforced with metal bolts by the North American Wildlife team in 1974, the idea was to lure an unsuspecting Sasquatch into the 10-foot by 10-foot pit that it couldn’t escape. As you hike the trails of Mount Shasta, keep an eye out for tall, graceful people with long, flowing hair dressed in white dresses and a walnut-sized organ protruding from the center of the forehead. These would be lemurs, most likely from the huge lost continent of Mu that was once under the Pacific Ocean and they helped explain how lemurs ended up on the island of Madagascar. One of the most traveled folk tales associated with Mount Shasta, some believed that Lemurians came to live in a city called Telos within the volcano.

OLD GARDENS.

Joseph H. Stewart State Park

It is built on an old house from the 1940s. The fruit grew here in large orchards, in the early days of Oregon’s commercial pear industry. You can still see some old pear, apple and walnut trees scattered throughout the park. You’ll also find historic fruit trees along the trail at Wolf Creek Inn State Heritage Site.

UNUSUAL BRIDGES.

The Sacramento River Trail is an ideal hike to study bridge architecture. Classic arch bridges carry vehicular traffic through Sacramento and the Diestlehorst Bridge is a prototype pier and iron girder bridge from the 19th century. The Ribbon Bridge is the first of its kind in the nation: a concrete ribbon structure 13 feet wide and 420 feet long. The Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay is the first American project by celebrated Spanish bridge architect Santiago Calatrava. The focal point of its design is a 218-foot curved tower on the north bank of the river that functions as a support for the bridge’s suspension cables and as the world’s largest sundial. The bridge has a glass platform that enhances natural light and allows unobstructed views of the mountains on the horizon and the salmon at stake below.

VOLCANIC MEMORIES.

This landscape was formed in many places by volcanic eruptions. The trail around Brown Mountain offers dramatic glimpses of the lava flow. At Black Butte, a small group of dormant “dome-shaped” volcanic craters dot the landscape. Plug domes have a type of lava flow that is too thick and stiff to flow normally, but instead comes out of the top as a crust of ice. All that remains of the mighty 12,000-foot volcano that once dominated the South Cascades are eight jutting peaks in the Mountain Lakes Wilderness. And there’s the strange Oregon wilderness, a pumice-covered landscape in the Sky Lakes Wilderness. Ash from the latest Mount McLouhlin eruption is found fifty feet deep in the area.

WATERFALLS.

This trail in McCloud Falls reveals three waterfalls in just over a mile: Lower Falls (a powerful ten-foot drop into a wide pool), Middle Falls (a classically wide 50-foot waterfall), and Upper Falls (a jet of water running through granite cliffs). Two hikes in the town of Dunsmuir also find different types of falls: Hedge Creek Falls running through basalt rock and Mossbrae Falls dripping through moss and ferns.

WRITER INSPIRATIONS.

The best-selling Western writer of all time, Zane Gray, used the Rogue River as the centerpiece of many of his stories. His cabin can still be seen at the Rogue. Jack London wrote Valley of the Moon while he was a guest at the Wolf Creek Inn.

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