So we (Dawn, Monica and I, Dawn drove) went to the Wild Horse Sanctuary on Saturday. It was awesome.

I got to pet horses! Even a baby horse! The baby horse and his other baby horse friend came over and I got to pet one!

(Erm...that's not me doing the petting in that pic, it was Ashley the intern. Obviously I was too busy petting to take a shot of me doing it.)

And there was a SUPER BABY HORSE born JUST A FEW HOURS AGO that we got to see!

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!

The "Big Mama" ringleader horse especially liked me. I got to pet her a lot. She practically horse-hugged me. AWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

We also wandered around for awhile and saw some baby burros!

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!

And giant freaking jackrabbits that were about the size of a medium-sized dog!

You know, I thought I'd be more articulate about this trip, but... BABY HORSES! HORSES ARE SO CUUUUUTE! NOW I AM ACTING LIKE AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GIRL OR SOMETHING!

Okay, I'll try to be a little more rational...this is a cool place. It's the most free-wandering place to visit ever--no charge, you can just wander in to the guest house and check stuff out. And yeah, you can just wander anywhere you want. The interns showed us around (especially to where the baby horse was), but other than that, it's very relaxed. Good for bringing a picnic too. Should you ever get that far north on the right day, give it a shot!

After that, Dawn wanted to go look at nearby Shasta State Historic Park, which is on the list for closure on July 1. (I was reminded of the 70 in 70 and yes, it looks like the guy covered this one. Upon seeing it, uh...I can totally understand why it is on the list because it seems pretty well abandoned already. I don't mean that the park consists entirely of ruins, or that it's not exactly a park that one can really "close down" (you can just wander around any old time there, it's not like it's not locked off behind a gate). But clearly, there's not a lot going on around there. I picked up a brochure on the park and they haven't updated it since 2002. Gray Davis is still listed as the governor, y'all. The only thing updated on it is a sticker they had to put on the front of the flier with the new hours of the museum. It used to be open from 10-5 every day. Now it's open from 10-5...on Fridays and Sundays only. (Now, seriously, why Friday rather than Saturday?!) Anyway, since we were there on Saturday, there was no museum . There was some other area (the Litsch Store) that theoretically one could have looked at, but even in 2002 they didn't have hours to look at it. That pretty much just left us wandering the ruins.

I hate to say this about a park that is literally in ruins, but it kinda felt abandoned by the state already there. It looks like they're having a "save Shasta" event in a couple of weekends and I wish them well, but...dang, I can kinda see why this one is on the cut list since it looks like the only thing that anyone was putting money into was the museum...and that got its hours cut to hell. Kinda sad, y'all.

We did another brief trip back to Turtle Bay and the Sundial Bridge so Monica could check it out. It was a lot emptier around there without eclipse-watchers. After that we went back to Red Bluff for dinner, then drove on home. Got back about an hour earlier than last time.

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