{"id":12622,"date":"2024-06-03T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T15:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=12622"},"modified":"2024-06-01T11:43:30","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:43:30","slug":"the-road-trip-mt-shasta-city-alturas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=12622","title":{"rendered":"The Road Trip: Mt. Shasta City & Alturas"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

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Snow and ice-covered Castle Lake<\/p><\/div>\n

We left Novato<\/strong> fairly early on a beautiful Sunday morning, leaving Pete a note of thanks for the great hospitality, and headed north.\u00a0 We found Highway 37 North closed, so we were detoured through Sonoma<\/strong>, which happened to be where our parents last lived.\u00a0 Heading east, we connected to Interstate 5, and eventually hit the bustling town of Willows<\/strong>, which we wanted to get off the freeway and drive through as it was where our father was born.\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t changed much in the 110 years since then, but I did get a photo of Willows ‘International’ Airport (below)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We continued up Interstate 5<\/strong> and amazingly we could see our destination of Mt. Shasta from 100 miles away!<\/strong>\u00a0 Awesome!!\u00a0 The landscape changed as the large Oak and maple trees outside of Redding<\/strong> gave way to majestic Pines, Firs and Spruce trees as we neared our destination.<\/p>\n

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Bartender Sharynne at the oldest bar in Mt. Shasta City<\/p><\/div>\n

We arrived in Mt. Shasta City<\/strong> and were told we could not check into our hotel until later in the afternoon, so we went into town and found the Vet\u2019s Club<\/strong>, ‘Mt. Shasta\u2019s Oldest Bar’<\/strong>.\u00a0 I thought I could get cheap drinks as a veteran, but it wasn\u2019t an official Veteran\u2019s bar, it was just started by a veteran many years ago, but the beer was great!\u00a0 We surprisingly, somehow befriended the bartender, Sharynne<\/strong> (that\u2019s how they spell Sharon up here), who told us about the history of the bar (it used to be a house of ill-repute), and she wanted to sign up for the blog.\u00a0 We ended up meeting all the guys at the bar and having a great time.\u00a0 We were told about a lake that we should see while we\u2019re here \u2013 Castle Lake<\/strong>; so, we drove out to the mostly covered with snow and ice lake to take in this beautiful winter wonderland scene.\u00a0 We knew we had a long road ahead of us tomorrow, and it was a long day today, so we went back to our hotel, checked in, had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and crashed.<\/p>\n

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McArthur-Burney Falls<\/p><\/div>\n

We awoke the next morning to a cloudless, cool morning and started a drive that has got to be one of the most beautiful drives we\u2019ve both ever taken, as the road is cut out of the towering pines, which ultimately give way to beautiful vistas of mountains and expansive valleys.\u00a0 The Big Valley<\/strong> is indeed one of the biggest and most beautiful valleys we\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 We stopped at McArther-Burney Falls Memorial State Park<\/strong> and checked in with Ranger Mike at the gate and got all the info on seeing the park and the water falls.\u00a0 Amazing!!\u00a0 I seem to be saying that a lot this week!\u00a0 It occurred to both of us that this drive alone made the trip worthwhile \u2013 the beauty is indescribable, so I\u2019ll quit trying to describe it!<\/p>\n

We ultimately arrive at our destination \u2013 Alturas<\/strong>, which was a little bigger than we had imagined, but a little deader than we hoped.\u00a0 We cruised down Main Street<\/strong>, which seemed to be empty on this Monday afternoon.\u00a0 We checked in to our hotel and asked the hotel manager, who was born and raised in Riverside<\/strong>, where we could get lunch and a beer.\u00a0 He really couldn\u2019t come up with much, but finally offered up the Desert Rose<\/strong> Indian Casino<\/strong>.\u00a0 We drove through town to get to the Desert Rose and saw that many of the shops were shuttered.\u00a0 We arrived at the Desert Rose Casino to find that it was like a boxcar in a wheatfield.\u00a0 Luxurious it was not!\u00a0 We had lunch and beer at the bar and found out the bartender was born in Orange,<\/strong> which was about the most interesting thing about the place.\u00a0 We thought that maybe people come to Alturas because they are running or hiding from someone or something.\u00a0 And, disappointingly, there were no turkeys, turkey farms or turkey pot pies to be found!<\/p>\n

Our guide book on Alturas, OK, maybe just a small paragraph on Google, told us we should visit the historic Hotel Niles, so we did, but the restaurant and bar were closed and we saw no one in the hotel – although it looked like it might have been pretty nice in its day.\u00a0 We were told the population of Alturas has been declining over the years.\u00a0 We now understand why.\u00a0 Most people come here not to live, but to hunt or fish and then leave town.\u00a0 We got up very early the next morning and got out of town.<\/p>\n

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Willows ‘International’ Airport<\/p><\/div>\n

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Mt. Shasta from our hotel room<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alturas Main Street commute traffic<\/p>\n

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One of the only signs of life in Alturas<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alturas’ Glitzy Desert Rose Casino<\/p><\/div>\n

Next Road Trip post: Thursday, June 6 ‘Beautiful Lake Almanor and Beyond’<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow We left Novato fairly early on a beautiful Sunday morning, leaving Pete a note of thanks for the great hospitality, and headed north.\u00a0 We found Highway 37 North closed, so we were detoured through Sonoma, which happened … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[813],"tags":[4423,4436,4422,4429,2044,4434,4435],"class_list":["post-12622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-alturas","tag-burney-falls","tag-mt-shasta","tag-mt-shasta-city","tag-novato","tag-the-vets-bar","tag-willows-airport"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Castle-Lake.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-3hA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12622"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12678,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12622\/revisions\/12678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}