Monday, July 16, 2012

Day 83, Castella slash Shasta

7/10
Daily mileage: 11
Mile 1499-1510

Town day! Okay honestly I'm just ready for any break from this not feeling well heat nonsense so I could care less what town, I'm just happy it's a town.
Down we went, switch backing and contouring away, but man did those miles go quick, 7.5 miles in an instant. We had a hazy view of Shasta for breakfast and by 8:30 we had entered Castle Crags State Park, passed over the Sacramento River and were staring at a freeway on ramp for Highway 5. Now the bigger question, which town. Not a good place to hitch from at all. 2 miles one way to Castella, where we had a box or the other direction towards Dunsmuir (another small town) or 13 miles to Shasta City. Started walking towards Castella, dragging pretty slow. TW managed to get us a hitch about halfway there so at least that saved us a bit of road walking. While we were inside grabbing our boxes one of the guys had already scored 3 of us a ride to Shasta, land of the natural grocery store and hopefully wifi. So off we went, leaving Cheese Whiz behind to try to find one more ride. We were crammed into a car heading to the Oregon County Fair which is why only 3 of us fit. Shasta is a cute town. Great views of the mountain, good grocery stores and bakeries and ridiculous people watching. We camped out on the lawn behind the natural food store, eating watermelon and other snacks, enjoying the shade and even getting to charge stuff because there were outlets outside. Hung out with Kombucha for a bit. Found wifi ate giant cookies and enjoyed the morning. Met back up with Kombucha, Hawkeye, Joker, Wrongway, Samwise and Sweet As for some great Thai food.


After stuffing ourselves we headed back to the park and cobbled together our resupply in the heat of the day. Packed up our junk and got a ride back to the trail from an awesome section hiker who cheese whiz had chatted up earlier in the day. Hung out at the very scenic trailhead (ie gravel road) and finally made a few miles before calling it quits. Quite the hot and buggy climb right out of Castella/Shasta. Now let's see what tomorrow brings.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

No comments:

Post a Comment