Pit River Campground is located about halfway between Redding, California and Alturas, California, approximately 5 miles west of Fall River Mills on SR-299. Take the turnoff for Pit 1 Powerhouse Road and follow the signs for the campground, approximately 1 mile.
We had stopped at this campground last fall on our way back to Quartzsite for the winter, and liked it. At the time, the BLM had just finished an extensive restoration project at the campground, putting in new sites with new gravel, tables, fire rings, and pit toilets. There happened to be a BLM employee at the campground when we were there, and we had a chance to talk to him. He told us that they were going to have a camp host for the first time starting the spring of 2005. Later, when we'd made the decision to try volunteering, we thought of this campground. I did some checking on the Internet to find out which BLM office was responsible for this area of California (turned out to be Alturas), emailed them telling them we were interested in camp hosting. It didn't take too long to receive a reply!
This was really a perfect campground for our first hosting experience. It's a small campground -- 7 campsites plus 1 group site. There is also a day area with fishing, a boat ramp and swimming. There are 2 pit toilets which were pretty easy to keep clean since they were brand new. We took great pains to keep everything in the campground clean and garbage picked up. We figured that if we did so, the people who came to camp or use the day area would respect the campground and do their part to keep it clean. For the most part that work, with the exception of a few slobs that are always found in any group.
Our campsite at Pit River Campground:
Besides fishing in the Pit River (Earl got a yearly fishing license), Fall River Mills (a town about 5 miles from the campground) has a 5-star golf course (where Earl golfed every Monday...Seniors day), hospital, grocery store, restaurants, and other shopping. In addition, Burney is only about 15 miles to the west and also has a grocery store, restaurants, and shopping.
The campground is located in a riparian habitat of pine, oak, and ash trees. The campground itself is mostly made up of oak and ash trees with the pine trees, for the most part, at slightly a slightly higher elevation. We had lots of birds at the campground, and of course, they were busy building nests and having young ones during the month of May! We identified 26 different birds in or around the campground (some we saw only in the air flying over the campground):
Bald Eagle
Osprey
Red-Tailed Hawk
Canada Goose
Black-headed Grosbeak
Turkey Vulture
American Dipper
Mourning Dove
Song Sparrow
Spotted Towhee
House Finch
Tree Swallow
Brewer's Blackbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
Bullock's Oriole
Northern Mockingbird
California Quail
Yellow Warbler
American White Pelican
Acorn Woodpecker
Nuttall's Woodpecker
White-breasted Nuthatch
Western Tanager
Anna's Hummingbird
House Wren
American Robin
We started out with 2 hummingbird feeders that we'd brought along with us, but had to end up buying 2 more larger feeders because we had so many Anna's Hummingbirds! They were lots of fun to watch!
Anna's Hummingbirds:
One day I was sitting in the RV and happen to glance up at one of the feeders and noticed several hummingbirds flying around something that was hanging from it. I went outside to see what it was, and it turned out to be a baby hummingbird, which had apparently just left the nest. Guess he didn't know that when another hummingbird came along to chase him away, he was supposed to let go with his feet and fly off...instead, he hung on and turned upside down! I gently pried his little feet from the feeder, and held him in my hand for probably a minute or so before he flew off to a nearby bush.
Baby Hummingbird I rescued:
And then we had a little House Wren who was bound and determined to build a nest on the small ledge on our awning! It must have been a young House Wren that was inexperienced in nest building, because she would just lay twigs up there, but never in any order. After a week or two of trying to build a nest there...and sitting on the awning arm singing her little heart out...she finally gave up.
It rained most of the month of May...so much rain, in fact, that the day area flooded. Although the Saturday that we arrived at the campground was the beginning of the fishing season, the campground was pretty quiet during May because of all the rain.
Pit River at normal level:
Pit River at flood level:
Even with all the trees around our campsite, we were able to find a hole for both the TV satellite dish (used a portable dish on a tripod, not our roof-mounted one), and for the Direcway satellite Internet dish, so we were able to keep in touch with what was happening in the world, and with friends and family while we were at Pit River Campground.
The water pump in our RV went on the fritz...it would pump water, but the motor would continue running even after the water was turned off. We ordered a new pump from Shurflo, and replaced it when it finally got there (took nearly a month to get since it wasn't sent out when it was supposed to be, and then wasn't sent according to my instructions).
We found a few good restaurants to eat at in both Fall River Mills and Burney. In Fall River Mills, we had lunch many times at Hal and Cathy's Cookhouse, a B&B with a small restaurant attached. Excellent soup and sandwiches! The best pizza in FRM was at Slam Dunk Pizza next to the laundromat, and for Mexican food, we found La Cocinita to have very good food. In Burney, we enjoyed the Main Street Cafe for breakfast. On Earl's birthday, we had dinner at the Pit River Lodge located next to the campground...excellent food, although on the pricey side!
We did make a couple of trips to Redding while camp hosting to do shopping at Costco. Each time, we'd go into Redding on SR-299 and come back on SR-44/SR-89 which goes by Lassen Volcanic National Park...beautiful drive!
Speaking of trips, we did take a few day trips while we were in the area. The first one was the Cassel-Fall River Road from Fall River Mills south and west to Cassel and then north back to SR-299. Then we took another loop road to check out a couple of campgrounds listed in Don Wright's Guide to Free Campgrounds. Again, we started out at Fall River Mills and drove a portion of the Cassel-Fall River Road. We turned east, though, on Cinder Cone Road, north on CR-111 (Pittville Road), through Pittville, and back out to SR-299. Our third day trip again started at Fall River Mills, this time on Dana Road (CR-A20) north and west through Glenburn and Dana to SR-89. On this trip, we also drove the road which goes around Lake Britton and stopped at Burney Falls State Park to view the Falls.
Mt. Lassen:
Burney Falls:
We did discover mice under the hood while the Lazy Daze was parked at the campground! We probably never would have known except for the fact that Maxx was sniffing intently around a tire, underneath, and around the front. So I lifted the hood and saw 2 mice! We quickly bought a few traps and kept one under the hood with peanut butter on it. I don't know exactly how many mice we caught while we were there, but it was probably around 10 or so. Fortunately, they didn't eat through any wires or hoses!
In July, Pit River Lodge had a car show with probably around 130 old cars. We went over, had lunch, and walked around looking at all the old cars. This is, apparently, an annual doing here.
We had a couple from Germany stay at the campground while we were there. They had shipped their Class A over from Germany, and were spending a year touring Canada, the USA, and Mexico. Their Class A was quite different looking than what US Class A's look like.
We also had visits from several Lazy Dazers...most of them stopping only for a while to visit while passing through the area: Joe Hamm came by in May for a short visit; Art & Barbara Berggreen, and Bob & Di Filler stopped by on their way to Alaska; Steve S also stopped by for a brief visit; and, last, but certainly not least, Lorna Dunham stopped by and spent several days at the campground, and we had a great time visiting!
Finally, the time came to leave. The Friday before we left, Claude Singleton, the Recreation Planner at the Alturas BLM office (and our supervisor), David McKirahan (the civil engineering technician and the head guy for the reconstruction/restoration of the campground), plus two other BLM employees took us out to lunch as Hal & Cathy's and presented us with a plaque.
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