Volcano and Treehouse Trip: Day Three

We checked out of the St Bernard Lodge and headed north to Oregon, home of the treehouses.

Along the way, we stopped in Redding to see the world famous (at least in Redding) Sundial Bridge. It was designed by the same guy that designed the Athens Olympics stuff (no, I don't remember what they looked like either). This was very cool looking though.

It goes across the Sacramento river, which is a major salmon spawning river. So the deck of the bridge is mostly made of glass to reduce the shadow it puts on the river, and it is a suspension bridge so that they did not have to put and supports in the river (I guess salmon aren't smart enough to swim around them).

Even better, the bridge is an extremely accurate sundial (one day a year - we were a few days too early for the June 21 Accuracy Day, continuing the theme of pushing the summer season). In the above picture, the brass circles are times of the day. The shadow is a bit after 12:00, which amazingly, it was.

Finally, after navigating a wide variety of backroads in the Takilma Oregon area, we found the treehouse place. It was very moist, but not raining and a fire was going, so it looked very inviting. Halfway through the tour a downpour broke out, putting out the fire and stranding us about 100 feet from our treehouse (pictured above) with our raincoats safely staying dry in the car. After getting bored trying to wait the storm out, we made a dash for the treehouse. Yes, we got very wet.

Eventually the rain stopped and we were able to venture out a bit.

The best looking treehouses look like this. These are also the ones that are booked very early. We will try very hard to get one of these next time. These swinging rope bridges are all over the place. For me they are harrowing to walk on, but cool enough to take the chance.

It turns out that the seniors from some private K-12 school in Marin chose this week to stay here for their senior trip. I cannot believe that I acted like that when I was their age, but suspect I may be mis-remembering. They did manage to quiet down around 10 PM and so the impact was minimal.

The night was filled with farm sounds. There are horses just outside our house, a variety of dogs that protect us from squirrels and raccoons and such, and a rooster that makes sure we don't sleep too late. And the sound of chainsaws off in the distance (I haven't seen logging trucks, but I suspect this is still logging country). 

We signed up for a zip line class and a tie dye class for tomorrow. I have no idea if these work in the rain.

That's it - move along...