First trip to see McArthur Burney Falls with a bit of excitement!
Since it is a six hour drive to the Falls, we stopped at Red Bluff Recreational Park just off of I-5 for an overnight and rest. The park is right by the Sacramento River with three miles of trails and a California native botanical garden.
While hiking the trails, we saw this California King snake, a non-poisonous snake. There were lots of birds at the campground too.
Next day, we drove to Burney Falls to see the wonders of such a beautiful falls. The Burney Creek flows over the top of the falls and continues down to Britton Lake. All the other water flowing down is spring waters.
There are two layers of lava formation. Where the spring waters comes out defines the layers.
You could even see springs flowing on one of the hillside across the creek, next to the falls.
The other slope was a complete hillside of lava rocks.
We took the trail down to Britton Lake, which is a very large man-made reservoir. We were the only people hiking on the trail. The campground was very quiet too with only five campers, mainly retirees.
After a peaceful and restful night, we decided to hike a portion of the north-bound PCT. The trail starts out in a grove of Ponderosa Pines with some firs, then the trail pararells a road that goes by the lake.
The road had a sign saying no trucks. We saw a large semi driving down the road and shortly afterwards we heard the beeping of the semi and then saw the truck slowly backing up to get back off that road.
The road leads to the dam, which doesn't allow trucks over it. We walked across the dam.
And down to the Pit River, where during high waters kayakers can put in. The Pit River flows into the Sacramento River. The PCT continues on from the top of the dam, but we had gone three miles and it was hot in this area; so, we headed back to camp.
Now for the FIASCO!
While settling up camp, we noticed one of the trailer tires was loosing its tread.
Luckily, we had no major blow-out while traveling. We replaced the bad tire with the 13 year old spare, but didn't feel comfortable driving on a spare that old. While changing tires, we discovered that our car jack isn't designed to be used with the travel trailer; so, we were again lucky that a fellow camper had a jack that worked. We were also lucky that in Burney was Les Schwab Tire Center, just six miles away. So the second day before hiking the PCT, we headed into town to get a new tire and a jack for the travel trailer. Now, we aren't done yet! With new tire on and 13 year spare back in where the spare sits on the travel trailer, we decided to cut our stay short and head home. We had seen everything and done all that was planned. While hooking up trailer to car, I noticed that the other tire was showing signs of failure. Yup, back to Les Schwab for two more tires, the spare got replaced too!
