A tough day on the job....

So we got to Mt Shasta City right on the dot at 2pm (as predicted). It is a cute little town nestled in-between the base of Mt Shasta and I-5. Some things that we passed on our way here that we didn't blog about before:

Lake Shasta - the way the clay is exposed it looked like it needed

about 40 more feet of water to be at regular level - but then there were a bunch of structures there on the clay that looked at least semi-permanent.

and was glacier-cut granite...somewhere to coCastle Crags State Park - the spires that we passed were BEAUTIFUL. A dude in town said that it was like a mini Yosemiteme back and check out for sure.


We checked into our motel and walked back in to town where we sampled the best water in the world from the downtown water fountain and rented the rock climbing gear we needed. Unfortunately SOMEbody had super large feet so he had to buy some rock climbing shoes from another store....it was a relief that he was able to find some that fit decently or we would have been out of an activity for the day!

So...now for the adventurous part of our day. We decided to try and hike up Black Butte which would offer us good views of shasta, with not quite as much snow (apparently the approach hike to the mountain is pretttty snowy) as some other day hikes. After the directions at our motel turned out to be totally bogus we decided to go to the forestry service office downtown to get real directions. They had a really nice printed guide of how to get there waiting for us which we tried to follow...but apparently we got a little too excited about one of the turns and went left about 0.4 miles too soon. This gave us a rolling adventure off the road around fallen trees and some interesting noises and bumps along the way. We couldn't always tell which way the road was either....thank goodness we rented a Subaru....but too bad it didn't have a brush guard!!! . Despite how ridiculous this "road" was we kept pushing on b/c the Forestry Service lady had explicitly said "it may feel as though you have been going forever and you missed the turn....but don't give up".

Finally we determined we were lost but found a tree with a number on it....luckily the nice lady at the Forest Service answered the phone but unfortunately she knew nothing about this said "numbered tree" that we thought was going to be our saving grace. Instead, we took a chance on a "side road" that looked much nicer than our "main road" (i.e. we didn't rip paint off as we drove and leslie wasn't biting her lip quite as much). We finally found the trail head...although a lot later than we anticipated.

The views and the hike were all worth it though...amazing! We even got to have a snowball fight!!! Unfortunately time (sunset was approaching) and a large snow field on a steep slope prevented us from topping out. The boulders were quite impressive and basically it was a nice spiraling upward rock scramble with increased difficulty interspersed with shiny snowfields. The views of Mount Shasta were great...and the interstate and the UP railroad too. We managed to find our way back through what were strangley nice (compared to our trip in the other direction) roads...even if they were a bit steep . Again - thank goodness we rented the Subaru, as the Forestry service explicitly does not recommend the use of minivans or trailers on these roads.

After our adventure we were ready for a quick bite and then to bed....the fish tacos and local beer at the tavern were just what we needed.

Up tomorrow: intro to rock climbing and then up to Ashland, OR