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Northeast California
Creeks, Peaks and Craters
It’s 6:00 a.m. when I awaken in my room at the River Inn in Redding, California, the sun streaking through a gap in the drapes. It’s early summer and the city is sleeping off the pyrotechnic display and festivities of last night’s Fourth of July celebration. But I am clear-headed and ready to address the morning. Redding, situated at the top of the Sacramento Valley, is the perfect gateway to the high country of Northern California, and to a ride that promises to be all the more diverse and mesmerizing due to the dramatic changes in altitude and the vistas offered by the regal Cascade Range.
Day 1: Got trees?
I’m pleased to find that the Sundial Grill opens at the stroke of seven as advertised. Breakfasting with fellow travelers, Doug and Jim, we discuss our route for the day, which will take us east on US 299 to Adin, south on 139 to Susanville, and then northwest on 44 and 89 to Mt. Shasta.
Though stifling in the city as early as 8:00 a.m., the air is crisp and cool when we climb into the forests. US 299 as far as Burney is a forgettable slog spent dodging semi-trailers and logging trucks, but soon the trees open out on to the high plateau – or rather, the trees have been clear-cut, and the spare, weedy-looking saplings bear a faint semblance of the forest that would have been. As we’re climbing toward a further ridge, the perfect white cone of Mount Lassen appears on the horizon.
On the southern route for Susanville, the high plateau displays its varied nature. At first, flat, fertile farmland spreads out on both sides, all honey-gold and toasty brown under the intense sunlight of a cloudless sky. Then the terrain starts to undulate, twisting the road as we roll into the Modoc National Forest (less a forest than rolling prairie with clumps of scrub bushes and a few stands of stunted trees interspersed). Eagle Lake looks like a ragged-edged blue mirror left on the plateau, and 139 clings to the shoreline in a series of fast turns. We ride down into Susanville, the road swinging down the canyon’s side in a series of glorious sweepers....
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