We made it to Redding and stayed at the Premier RV Resorts, asking for a shady spot for a week. We got a surprisingly shady one across the creek and near the back. Some of you know the history of this location but for those of you who don’t, I will enlighten you. If this is old news, just skim through it.

My history, with my family, of Airstream travel, has been documented on this blog. However, with a love of RVing, comes a love of camping whether it is in a government campground or private RV park. In 1970 we were living in Thousand Oaks CA, my father working for Westinghouse and we were camping whenever we could. Westinghouse decided to close the office where my father was employed. They gave him the choice of moving to Baltimore MD or leaving Westinghouse. Growing up in the Pittsburgh PA area, he chose to leave. His next move was to purchase a KOA in Redding CA!

I was 10 years old when we moved there in January, and I was ‘privileged’ to change schools in mid-year! We were now owners of a campground and we got to see the other side of RV’ing.

It was interesting growing up on a campground during my ‘teenish’ years. During the non-school days, I had a built-in job, working all summer at the campground. My job usually involved cleaning the bathrooms!

My parents did a lot of improvements to the campground over the 10 years they owned it. One addition was the expansion of sites on the other side of our creek. We added about 40 extra sites and had to build a bathroom there (I am standing by the door of it above). Since they were on the other side of the creek, a bridge needed to be built.

I don’t have a picture of the original bridge, which was just a set of culverts covered by dirt and asphalt. I do have a picture of the current version of the original bridge:

Ironically, it still looks basically the same. A level of concrete, and asphalt egress, has been added but it still will flood just like it used to. It happened to us many times, the heavy rains came, the creek swelled and we would have about a foot or two of water rushing over the top (like the washes in Texas)! This made it very difficult for RVs on the other side of the creek to get out. We needed a second bridge.

My dad, being a frugal person, found a different solution than a fully engineered and commercially constructed bridge. He decided to use a railroad boxcar. Now, this might have been taking his love of trains a bit too far! He purchased a boxcar, had the top portion cut off, leaving just the floor and frame underneath. Concrete supports were placed at each end and they placed the boxcar:

My dad thought there might be some trepidation from people that needed to use it so he took some promo shots showing it was safe:

He drove our trailer on the bridge to show the strength. We ended up using it a lot during flooding and even when the creek was dry. It took some very precise alignment when crossing the bridge and straight-line accuracy. Flash-forward to now:

The bridge is still standing! Some enhancements have been made and it is no longer in regular use for RVs, but you can bike or walk across it whenever you want. At the behest of some neighbors in the park, I asked if we could pull our current Airstream on the bridge to recreate my dad’s shot. My request was not received favorably, so this is all you get.

We have visited the old KOA (as we call it) numerous times in the past few years. It is very strange to call them as they still have the same phone number (albeit with a different area code): 246-0101. Since we were a KOA, in the phone book we were listed along with radio and TV stations (young people, Google ‘phonebook’). We would get phone calls from people and they would request a specific song to play. After many times, explaining we were not a radio station, but a campground, we came across a better response. We would tell them we would try to get that song on the air and hang up.

The staff at the current campground have learned who I am during this time (we still have not received any free nights – wink) and I have sent them many old pictures in the past:

They even have taken some of the photos and made a collage they have in their Rec room:

You can never really go back to the way things were but you can always relive memories. That is what happens whenever we go camping here.