Billy Goat Gruff

December 4, 2013 by lauramacky 6 Comments

The other day we were driving through the Gold Country here in California and what a glorious day! It was 70 degrees, clear as a bell, but oh so dry. The lack of rain has caused the oak trees to stay in their fall color a lot longer; so even though it looks beautiful across the rolling hills, we really need rain.

Much of California gets its water from the Sierras when the snow melts. The water goes into a series of dams that are at different elevations and is distributed from there. One lake (or dam) that we went over is called New Melones Lake. There are many such dams in California and most of them are used for recreation as well as water distribution. We noticed that the water was very low. In fact, someone there was saying he’d been coming to the lake for 25 years and had never seen it that low.

Here you can see I went under the bridge to take a picture not only to show the waterline which you can see right above the red clay but just because I thought it was a cool shot. 😛