Lots of pictures from Redding

Here are a bunch of pictures from our weekend down in Redding. We had a lot of fun.

Quick, she's not looking! Lily knows she can play with Bella's toys as long as Bella doesn't see her.

Look how big Lily is compared to Bella!

Just kidding, when they're sitting down there's not that much difference in height (when they stand up it's a different story), but you can still see some difference. This is what her hair looks like after I take out the piggy tails. It makes me think of Ace Ventura: "white devil, white devil" or even Flock of Seagulls. I wish you could see it better, it's quite impressive.
Here's the Pit River Bridge. Usually the water is up to the red clay soil. It's so strange to see it this low (that's the reason we wanted to go see it). My grandpa (former Highway Patrol) said he used to love working on the lake during drought years because all kinds of crimes would be solved. Guns thrown off this bridge would be found, cars stolen and rolled into the lake are found, and all sorts of other things. I guess that's one good thing to come out of having no water in the North State.
Look how strong we are! It's a good thing there's no train going across, I don't know if we could have held it up.

We're diving into the water... duh. What do you mean, "there's no water"? I mean, it's the lake, there has to be water... ???

Water fight! I totally won.

We discovered that the old train tunnel was uncovered. This is where the train went before they built the dam here. They had to divert the train tracks to go over the new lake (thus the bridge in the background). Then they used these tunnels to divert the river water while the dam was being built. I can't even think of the last time it was above water, I'm sure it was before I was born.

We had to prove that we were there.The tunnel had caved in (we assumed from the water pressure above the tunnel when there was water in the lake) so we climbed to the top of the cave in.

And found that it was caved in on the other side too. It was a little creepy. We could see the structures from when the tunnel was built. The floor was layered with sediments. It was cool to see how much had been deposited since the dam was built.

We had to check out some of the graffiti. I tried to cover the place where the 'a' would have been so it looked like it said 'Isabella', but it didn't work out so well.

Where we parked our car, it should have been underwater or at least in the water. You can see a major water mark on the train track supports.

This is one of the old train trusses. The sediments on either side of this little creek were up to our shoulders! It's amazing that so much 'dirt' has been slowly filling up the lake (or at least what used to be a lake).

I was trying to get to the water (not the creek I'm standing in, but the big 'river' to the right of the picture) so I jumped over this little iron deposit (you can see it to the right of my bum) and sank right into the clay (up to my ankles). It was so nasty. Not to mention I had Bella in my arms. I'm in the creek trying to wash that nasty stuff off me and my shoes (which I almost lost in the clay!).

We are California Girls. We found these sunglasses (yes, I know that's a little gross), but ended up finding the girl they belonged to so we gave them back. She looked so cute I just had to get her some of her own. She actually like to wear them.

Charlie Creek bridge. Usually you can drive a boat up this section of the lake. Not today.
The girls were pooped after spending the afternoon in the sun. Hey, for that matter, I was too.