<< God speaks to me through license plates

2008 > July

Movie overdose >>

Holiday weekend ::

We drove up to Mount Shasta and Shasta Lake to spend the weekend with Lori’s stepdad’s family.

We saw the Mount Shasta fireworks display up close from a boat on Lake Siskiyou. I didn’t try to capture that in a photo, but here’s sunset from the boat:

Earlier Friday we went to a picnic in McCloud, where I was surprised to see water pouring out of a leaky water tower. Tom explained that water was abundant and free there. The next morning, I happened to come across Bottled Water Backlash: Environmental Concerns are Sending People Back to Their Taps which tells us (about halfway down the page) Nestle wants to build the largest water bottling plant in the U.S. in McCloud.

Saturday we spent the day on a boat on Lake Shasta, putting in near the bridge where I-5 and the Union Pacific main line cross the lake.

The local news of the day and maybe the summer was the Motion Fire west of the lake and the Martin Mars waterbomber being used to drop massive quantities of water on it. ShastaLake.com has some pretty spectacular photos. We were somewhat startled to be not too far from where the bomber swooped in for a landing:

We watched the bomber and its spotter plane make quite a number of passes over the fire area, to the west of the lake, as we made our way down to the dam at the lake’s southwest corner.

A couple of times we saw the bomber dumping water on the mountainsides. Looking into the sun it was hard to get a good view of the fire or even the camera’s LCD viewfinder; enhancing this shot I’m seeing the smoke more clearly than when I was there:

<< God speaks to me through license plates

2008 > July

Movie overdose >>

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