Lake Shasta And Caverns California

Instead of sitting around and just relaxing I decided to go to Lake Shasta Caverns. The caverns are a National Natural Monument. In order to get to the caverns, you must drive 20 miles north of Redding on I-5. Once you get there you take a boat across Lake Shasta then a bus up the mountain to the caverns. The caverns are interesting. They were discovered by J. A. Richardson on November 11, 1878. That is known because he marked it on the wall in carbonite. He wrote the date as Nov 11 78. I guess he didn’t think that there was a 1978 coming up in another 100 years. You must go up and down 612 steps in the caverns. Most of the steps are normal but some are narrow. I started out with my ISO setting at 2500 but realized that it had to go higher so I moved it up to 4000. My shutter speed was 1/125 and my f-stop was supposed to be set at f/8.0 but I didn’t notice that it got changed so I had to deal with that in post processing. The formations that you see are similar to other caverns that I have been in before. There was something that struck me while I was walking through the caverns. After spending time at Yosemite National Park and seeing the strength of the granite mountains and the absolute power of the water cutting through the rocks there was a huge difference beneath the surface where everything is so fragile, and the water builds formations instead of carving them down. After the caverns I drove to Lake Shasta Dam and caught some images of the dam, Lake Shasta and Mt. Shasta. Ever since I drove into Redding, I could see that Mt. Shasta creates its own clouds and makes for nice images.