The Sundial Bridge

My Random Event Generator (Carolyn) struck again. It was a beautiful, sunny day today with no other obligations so we were working in the front yard. Flower beds that had suffered through the winter with several days of frost needed cleaning up and the lawn was looking shaggy but starting to turn green. It needed a perfunctory mowing to clean off the leaves and then a treatment of pre-emergent crabgrass killer. With temperatures reaching over 70, it just made sense to work around the house.

However, it also made sense to go adventuring. Sometime last year Carolyn had read about a "sundial bridge" in the local newspaper and she thought it was relatively close to us - Sutter County, maybe. We decided it would make a nice afternoon excursion after we had tired ourselves out on the flower bed and lawn.

Well, it turned out that the Sundial Bridge is in Turtle Bay park, Redding, in Shasta County, about 175 miles and 2.5 to 3 hours away. Still, it was a beautiful day for a drive. By the time we arrived we only had two hours to enjoy the bridge and the nearby gardens and fountains. That turned out to be plenty of time.

The bridge really is a marvel of beauty and utility. It's hard to decide whether it should be classed as a bridge or a sculpture because it's such a good example of both. It's a suspension footbridge across the Sacramento River. It is a graceful structural sculpture with sweeping tower, delicate cables and attractive glass walkway that is lit from underneath at night.

It is also a working sundial. There are markers on the north side of the Sacramento River to indicate what time of day the shadow of the main structure falls on that marker. Click on the reference above to learn more about this beautiful attraction.