Oroville/Chico, CA

In early May, 2023, we took a week-long trip to Oroville, CA, about 40 miles north of Sacramento.  We stayed at the Berry Creek Rancheria RV Park on the edge of the city.  It is a Good Sam member park with a 10/10/10 rating.  Located at the Gold Country Casino Resort, the park has over 70 sites, with full hook ups, in various sizes for back in, pull through, and upgrades like an expanded patio area with table, chairs, umbrella, and a gas fire pit. Sites are on level concrete pads. A store with gasoline is on site, a drive thru coffee kiosk is also on site. A shuttle will take you to the casino for gambling, restaurants or to see a show.  Although we didn't attend, Larry the Cable Guy was the featured show the weekend we were there. The park provided discount cards for the restaurants and coffee kiosk.  Our total for the week stay with our GS discount was around $350.

Our intention for the trip was to visit nearby Table Mountain in search of super blooms.  Unfortunately, it rained off-and-on most of the time we were there.  Our quest for super blooms failed, as pictured in the series below.  The yellow and white flowers in the series are about 1/4" in size.

Wolfy guards the door of our trailer as you enter. So beware!

Our Saturday journey, however, was more successful.  Oroville was finishing their annual Feather Fiesta Days, so they were celebrating with a parade and faire booths.  Our trailer, Guthrie, is a Cherokee Wolf Pup, so when we saw this carving in one of the booths, we felt it was worth a purchase.

From Oroville, we headed north to Paradise to see how their rebuilding was going.  Paradise and its surrounding area was burned to the ground in 2018 in a devastating fire that killed 85 people. Very few structures survived, so most of the buildings are new.

​In nearby Durham is the Barry R Kirshner Wildlife Sanctuary, which provides rehabilitation and long-term care for exotic and native species.  Each animal at the sanctuary has some kind of special need that would prevent them from survival in their natural habitat.

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From the wildlife sanctuary, we headed to the Chico Air Museum where they were having a "fly-in and open house. The museum is currently housed in a WWII Army Air Corp hangar and ​spans nearly 100 years of aviation history. The planes featured below came to the "fly-in".

One of the displays at the open house was about the Tuskegee Airmen, also known as the Red Tails because they painted the tails of their planes with red paint. These airmen were the United States first African-American fighter pilots in WWII which escorted our bombers in Europe.  Though they endured bigotry and other hardships, they became some of our best pilots. Below is a picture of the Roberts sisters whose father, 2nd Lt. George S. Roberts, was among the first graduating class of pilots. (Roberts is in the middle of the second row in the photograph they are holding.)

The next day, we visited the Oroville Dam, part of the California Department of Water Resources.  ​Oroville Dam is the tallest earth-fill dam, at 770-feet, in the United States. Construction first began in 1957 on relocating what is now Highway 70 and the Western Pacific Railroad. Work on the dam site began in 1961. The embankment was topped out in 1967.

Due to record rainfall and snow this year, DWR is maintaining releases from Lake Oroville to the Feather River at 35,000 cfs. These releases are being made in coordination with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and downstream water operators for flood control protection. Oro Dam Blvd. E. between Rusty Dusty Road and Canyon Drive in Butte County remains closed. Higher releases from the main spillway cause excessive water spray across the road and reduce driver visibility, requiring a closure for public safety.

A few years back the Oroville Spillway sustained extensive damage and had to be reconstructed. The video below shows how it was done.

Although the super blooms were a disappointment, our week spent at Oroville and the surrounding area was a nice getaway. We have never explored that area of California, but we're glad we did.