Monday, November 5, 2012

Lake Oroville: Visual Gold

Hi everyone, looks like I have enough pics/adventures to update weekly nowadays. It has been about a year and a half since I started this blog, and I've averaged about 350 hits over the last couple months, after over 600 in August!
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Lake Oroville is a giant reservoir in the foothills northeast of Sacramento
There is a visitor center for the recreation area with exhibits, native american artifacts recovered before the lake formed and viewing platforms
 Native Americans used these boulders to grind their food, especially acorns, which were then leached of their tannins with water
 Generations and generations of people used these stones
Dioramas 

An early 1800's map of Alta California 
They had this nice theater with over 30 videos to choose from. I went with rice 
I had no idea it was so prominent in the Sacramento valley. The video was so 80's, but maybe produced in 1992
A bubbling fountain
The dam is the straight line on the left, a raptor above 
It was a beautiful late-summer day, but back when the fires clouded the views, can you see the raptor again?
 One of the main bridges north/east into feather falls
 Looked like dinosaur bones
 Sunset

Note the lake level back then, vs in October
 
 Crazy pretty with the concentric rings of past water levels
 About 200 feet seemed exposed in some areas, I wonder why this red dirt collected here
 The plant life was interesting, and starting to turn fall colors
 A lot of resilient waterside trees dotted the former shorelines

 These boulders looked like a sliced potato to me
 This lake is popular with boaters


 The undulating shoreline reflects the foothill geography

The views from the valley showed the recent snows in the high mountains (at left) 
This pod looked like it was from the little shop of horrors
 But had lovely flowers
 This was an old, creeping lichen
 Tiny flowers

 Interesting fungus, reminded me of halloween
 Along with these
 Tiny cup fungus
 The sunset was breathtaking, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves






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