Oroville

Welcome, hydroelectrically powered reader, as I give you the details of our trip to Oroville Dam, the highest dam in the US. The three-day weekend (it was the President's Day holiday here last week) gave us a chance for some time away, and where better to go than this wonder of civil engineering?

Oroville is what's known as an earth fill dam, which basically means it's just a pile of rocks. But it's a very big pile of rocks: it's about 800ft high, with the foot of the dam being roughly at sea level. It's also pretty long, at a mile or more. It dams the Feather River, and provides a quite respectable amount of hydroelectric power, as well as creating a very large lake.

Oroville itself, as the name implies, is near to the place where the California Gold Rush started, although the precise site is now inundated by the lake. It's now very much home to California's enclave of Trump supporters, with the city of Oroville going as far as declaring itself a constitutional republic during the height of the pandemic to protest against federal mandates and restrictions. Outside the Foodmaxx supermarket, we were asked to sign a petition about something or other, but as I explained I couldn't vote in California, I was given a cheery greeting: "Then thanks, y'all have a wonderful day", which I think is the local translation of "naff off then". It's certainly something I'm adding to my vocabulary.

We stayed a little south of Oroville, in the state capital Sacramento. Regular readers will remember we visited here last July, but that was in blistering heat so we felt we needed to visit when the weather was a bit more bearable. In Sacramento, we ran into the attendees of a school choir festival (groups from each of 30 states putting on 15 minute excerpts from musicals), visited the local legend Temple Coffee several times, as well as a fantastic restaurant recommended by a colleague. We also started a new project on the way, to visit the various terrible fast food places of America, but I'm saving the lurid details of that for a future instalment.

In a couple of weeks we have another three day weekend, where we intend to visit yet another sizeable dam, and maybe even have some more terrible fast food, both of which should be notable experiences. In between, Helen has another choir concert to do so it's certainly all go here. Onwards!