DAY 109: CASTLE CRAGS

miles: 12

The plan was to wake up early and get an early start on the day today, but leaving Shasta was hard...

Ben packing up his things at our campsite  near this parking lot.

In the morning, Dan drove us back into town and we went to a nice coffee shop (YES!) where we proceeded to lounge around, dragging our feet.  Coffee after coffee after breakfast burrito after breakfast burrito. I even played a few games of chess! This is unheard of, to have time on our hands while in town, to do normal, relaxing things like play games. In the end, we didn't leave town until early afternoon! But there are no regrets, we needed every minute of our stay in Shasta, and thanks to Dan and his girlfriend Ivanna we enjoyed our stay immensely!

left to right: me, Ben, Dan, Ivanna, Manchurian

attempting to hitch.

Surprisingly not an easy hitch out of town. We tried at the gas station near the I-5 on ramp and we got kicked out. Went across the street, made a sign, stood around baking in the sun for a long time, waiting for someone to pull over. When someone finally pulled over, a kind woman offered to come pick us up if we were still there in 20 minutes but she was promptly talked to by a cop. Interesting how the cop pulled her over to talk to her about not picking us up, but did not give us a talking to...

Eventually another, older, woman pulled over and instructed us to get in the back of her van. 20 minutes later we were ejected onto the trailhead, back where we got picked up, and were ready to go.

So excited for this leg of the trip, I was eager to get hiking. Castle Crags has been a place I've always wanted to see. The granite! The dramatic cliffs! It's similar to Yosemite (at least to me) in grandeur. We had been hiking through less than spectacular logging areas recently and were thrilled to be entering some fine wilderness. The rest of California is going to be spectacular!

We hiked a mere 12 miles before our final camp spot appeared on a saddle on a ridge. It was getting dark and we pushed as far as we could before we feared we would not find another suitable campsite. The views of castle crags had been gorgeous and distracted me from the quite