The Travelling Teacher: USA - Californian Quirks

July 11-13

Crescent City was the last time I will see the ocean on this trip around the United States. I was now heading towards Las Vegas, where I will join a group for a couple of weeks. Most people would fly. I’m not most people…

Uncle Sam: for sale in Jackson

Sacramento's Capitol Mall. With the lack of rain the city has had, they
must have an enormous water bill in order to keep the grass this green!

It’s a lot of little stops that couldn’t really fill a blog on their own. The maps charting the route of my little Sentra are below. It gave me a chance to really take the road less travelled and get into the heart of America, finding some frankly bizarre things on the way.

Sacramento is the red dot

The whole drive - including returning to Sacramento
from Jackson - was about 500 miles or 800 km

I left Crescent City a little before 8am. The misty weather that greeted my arrival had returned, with the temperature at 55°F - less than 13°C. It made the stunning drive through the Redwood region quite challenging at times.

There are significant section of this road where you are
ordered to use your headlights even in daytime

Willow Creek

After a gas stop near McKinleyville, I waved goodbye to the 101 Pacific Highway and ventured east. And up. I stopped in a place called Willow Creek. It’s home to a museum…

Real of not, Bigfoot ain't that tall

A still from the video

You may have a view on whether Bigfoot/Sasquatch is real. I do, but I wasn’t going to share it here. I may not have come out alive. Big believers in Willow Creek. This museum charts the first reported sighting of a ‘large, hairy, upright walking creature’ in 1818 up to the controversial movie footage from 1967.

The plaster cast of a large footprint from 1958

Books 'proving the existence of Bigfoot'. Ahem...

Weaverville

This part of the drive was particularly stunning, the road meandering alongside the Trinity river. I was very jealous of the people rafting, no more so than when stuck in construction-related traffic. The outside temperature had now gone into the eighties.

A quieter part of the road

People were rafting and paddling along the Trinity river

I paused in Weaverville as it is home to the Joss House. This is the location of the oldest continuously used Chinese temple in the state of California.

The temple was built in the 1850s, destroyed by
fire in 1873 and rebuilt the following year

Many artefacts have been kept in the museum - this is a 'Foo Dog'

Why here? Well California was where the gold was at! You may have heard of its Gold Rush in the last 1840s. Apparently many Chinese citizens came over at that time as they were escaping floods, famine and political misfortune. From the port of Canton (now Guangzhou), they heard news of gold in California.

Good practice before Vegas...

Apparently these are patterns from temples from southeastern China

A large Chinatown of over 1000 citizens developed soon after, with the small museum attached to this temple giving an insight into life and challenges with locals from the time. An example is the Southern Lion costume below, which was retrieved from a dumpster in San Francisco.

Chinatown had a restaurant, bakery and barber shop...
and "several brothels and gambling parlors"

The dragon dates back to 1912 - imagine finding it in the rubbish??

Whiskeytown

No, I didn’t DUI. It was now a bit too warm for a whiskey anyway, getting close to hitting three figures in Fahrenheit (close to 38°C). I didn’t actually see the town of Whiskeytown, but stopped at its eponymous lake. It was created in 1963 by a dam and has stunningly clear water. The National Recreation Area covers 42,000 acres and has lots of trails, waterfalls and the like. I looked at the view whilst eating some of my sandwich, then moved on before being asked to pay $25 for ‘entry’ by being in their car park.

The dam was dedicated by President Kennedy in 1963

The dam provides water, power and flood control in
California's Central Valley, as well as creating this stunning lake

Redding

Almost five hours after leaving, I arrived in the major town of Redding. The temperature had hit 109°F (42.8°C) as I pulled into a shady spot outside a trailer park, asking a woman if I could briefly park in her spot outside her trailer. She didn’t seem to understand me, but her saying “you’re good, kid” made me feel like I had permission.

UK's Reading has never been that hot

I walked (passing an actual car park on the way) along a path to reach a bridge crossing the Sacramento river. Not just any old bridge, though: one that tells the time…

The pylon is 66 metres tall

The Sundial Bridge was opened in 2004. In order to protect a salmon habitat on one side of the bridge, a tall support spire was designed to hold up the 700-foot-long bridge from the opposite end, with no columns being placed in the water.

The river underneath was once the 'longest conveyor belt in
the world', transporting rock and gravel to a dam at Shasta

It does actually work pretty well as a sundial, as you’ll see from the picture below. Very impressive, though I couldn’t stay long - I had to eat the rest of my sandwich. And hydrate.

Time of photo: 1:50pm

Vina

Taking Interstate 5 would have given me an easy, straight shot south to Sacramento. As I had time, I decided to take a slight detour, heading southeast. The first stop I made was in Vina. It apparently has an abbey that was originally built in the 12th century on a different continent.

The stones, transported from Spain, were kept in here until construction finished

That isn’t it. I didn’t look that hard for the real, reconstructed abbey, in fairness. It was pretty hot - the temperature hit 111°F (43.9°C) on the drive down. Later research showed me I needed to walk another 100 metres. Oh well. They grow wine there as well.

The famous Californian wine is from the Napa Valley

Chico

Resisting the urge to shout ‘It’s Chico Time’ when arriving in this surprisingly large town, I parked along a sunlit main square (current temperature: back to 109°F) and headed into a toy store. One that hosts a tiny museum…

A trophy given out at a major US yo-yo tournament

The yo-yo manufacturing Company was started in Santa Barbara, California in 1928. It did exist before that, being called a ‘bandalore’, but a clever marketing connection with a newspaper helped their popularity rocket.

It seems that Coca-Cola were keen on the yo-yo

The centrepiece of the ‘museum’ is the world’s largest working wooden yo-yo. It is 116 kilograms. Its height is 127 centimetres. It can only be swung by a crane. Not sure whether they did Walk the Dog with it…

The yo-yo was built in San Francisco

Sacramento

I arrived in the city of Sacramento ten-and-a-half hours after leaving Crescent City. That’s a lot of podcasts. Aside from going to a supermarket, I wasn’t going to be doing anything. I left my brief exploration for the following morning.

The bear is a symbol of California

Sacramento has been California's state capital since 1854

Sacramento is the state capital of California. That building above is its Capitol building. The city seemed quite nice but I didn’t see a lot of it. I’d found out earlier in the day that a friend from Kazakhstan was in Sacramento for the weekend, so spent my time with him instead.

Old Sacramento has a slightly frontier
vibe to it but it is purely for show

I worked with Mikhail and Alisher for two years in Kazakhstan

Jackson

It was another good friend who was the reason I had come down to this part of northern California. The last time I saw Tom was when living in South Korea. Now he lives in the tiny town of Jackson. Population of about 5,000; I’m guessing that 4,900 of them own a MAGA hat.

The mine in this area extracted over $28 million
worth of gold before being closed in 1942

Quite a lot of the music on my drive was a country playlist...

Like many places around here, Jackson’s history is steeped in gold and its current trade revolves around wine. It’s about 90 minutes away from the more famous Napa Valley. Our wine tasting expert Paul was fairly disparaging about it. We ended up not having to pay for our tasting, which was nice of him.

There are over 45 wineries in Amador County

They've won prizes. The wine was nice.
Strawberry sparkling wine, too.

It’s been fun to get very much into the heart of one of America’s major states. There have been some wonderful, wacky and occasionally worrying sights as I have traversed from the coast towards the shimmering lights of Sin City. Reconnecting with old friends has also been a real pleasure on this trip (aside from remembering how bad a soju hangover can be).