Day 116: epic trail angel! <3

Sunday 8/12/12
Miles 1494-1506 (12 miles)
Elevation 2,155'

The last 12 miles getting into Castella was pretty quick. Whoo hoo! Cuz it was hot!! Lol. About 6 miles outside of castella you could hear the noise from the Interstate 5 freeway. Anyhow, we got picked up by an awesome trail angel Jan yaaaay!! Jan has been following my blog since the beginning so it was awesome to meet her. Thanks Jan!!! :D

She took us to her house in Redding which is about 45 minutes south of castella. Oh man it was soooo wonderful to be in air conditioning and have a place to organize all my crap and do laundry and shower and all the standard time-consuming town stuff. Lol!

We went to Olive Garden!! Aaaaaahhhhh unlimited breadsticks and salad aaaaahhh!!! Lol. That was cool. Haven't been to Olive Garden in a while and I've been having a weird craving for it. Ooooo I ate so much it was amazing :)

Jan is sooooo awesome! She has a little travel buddy too. It's a stuffed doll in a ranger outfit named Ranger Jan. lol it's cool! She'd be a great buddy for Squizzle! :)

Redding is the largest town I've been in this entire hike. It was...interesting. Lol. I dunno, all I gotta say is I am so glad I don't live on the mainland anymore. :). Jan's house was my oasis of awesomeness in the midst of a hugeass city.

But ooo there are trees everywhere in the surrounding areas!!! Yaaaaaay trees!!! I love trees :)

Day 115: holy heat wave batman!

Saturday 8/11/12
Miles 1471-1494 (23 miles)
Elevation 5,000'

Wow, I had no idea NorCal would be so hot! Lol. Oh glorious trees! Thank you for your shade!! <3. We were in tree coverage all day so at least we were out of direct sunlight. Whew! Actually, the heat isn't really bad, it's just that there's no wind.

Dang, there's an absolute crapload of poison oak everywhere! Pretty much since leaving Belden I've been kind of paranoid about poison oak. Not that i get a horrible reaction from it, but it just itches and really sucks for a few weeks. Last time I got poison oak was somewhere before mile 400. I was night hiking and concentrating on avoiding the poodle dog bush so I didn't really see the poison oak. Apparently I must have just mowed through some bushes. At least I'm not night hiking lately, so I can see it coming. It's funny, there were probably about 11 different types of plants I thought was poison oak since Belden. I was never sure. So I pretty much just avoided all green foliage all together. Lol!! But I finally figured out which plant is poison oak, and there was a LOT of it today. A least it wasn't growing over the trail. So I just had to made sure I didn't squat to pee right on top of some bushes. Haha!

Oh, the trail has been kind of overgrown today as well too. Arrrg!!! Annoying!! Lol! In the grand scheme of things, it's just that I'm so spoiled because the entire trail has been more or less incredibly well manicured. So whenever I come across some parts of thick overgrowth I get annoyed. Haha. Seriously though, the PCT is incredibly well marked and well maintained. Yay for the PCTA and all the trail crews!! :)

So this evening around 9pm, some hiker rolls up at our campsite, and it's Cowboy!! Holy crap, I thought he was days ahead! Lol! I swear, that guy has a way of showing up at the most random places! Anyhow, he was in the process of doing a 50 mile day. Holy crap! Yeah. Cowboy is an animal. Lol. Oh but he is so hilarious! He stuck around for about an hour and was entertaining me Kyle and Scallywag. Cowboy is such a character. He wears neon yellow shorts and hikes with neon yellow swim goggles (around his neck, not face) and a cowboy hat. And he regularly hikes 35 mile days. But he also zeros a lot. Which is awesome because that way he's still in my vicinity. Lol! Anyhow, I later found out that he ended up doing a 45 mile day. Geez!!! O.o

YouTube video: 3 videos from Muir Pass (from the high sierras)

kyle at a stream crossing

kyle throwing snowballs at me.  i didn't have any snow by me to throw back.  which is ok, because i throw like a girl anyways, so i don't think my projectiles would have gone very far.  lol.



i hate snow.  lol. 

Youtube Video: kyle messing around on a guitar

outside Drakesbad Ranch, Kyle was playing Kristo's Luna Designs guitar. 

ps.  kyle wants to point out that steel string guitars are not his forte.  :)

YouTube video: two curious deer

in Lassen National Forest

in yosemite, a while ago

YouTube video: gambling with drink packets. lol!

This was a few days ago, during lunch break.  Jello was worth 5, emergen-c 2, country time lemonade 2, crystal light were worth 1.

Day 114: more heat...and mt.shasta is getting closer!! :)

Friday 8/10/12
Miles 1453-1471 (18 miles)
Elevation 3,280'

I've been taking lots of pics of Shasta the last few days (it's the mountain peak with snow on it); pretty much since we were on Hat Creek Rim. This morning we had a super epic view of Shasta. It was amazing!! :) And it wasn't covered in smoke like it has been previously. If you flip through the pics the last few days, you can see that mt.shasta is getting bigger/closer! That's pretty exciting :) the trail is heading northwest towards Shasta and we will be going south and to the left of it. The only bummer part about the trail going this way is that everyday around 5:00pm the glare from the sun is gnarly. Lol. I still see a huge plume of smoke coming from the Lassen area. Dang, that means the fire is still going :(

The views from this morning were amazing!! As far as the eye could see it was rolling hills of trees. It reminded me of the ocean. But with trees, instead of water. Lol.

Today we had to go by lots of exposed areas. Probably old logging areas, is my guess. Dang that was toasty!! :( So glad I had my umbrella! In this one section I took a shortcut, and saw lots of bear footprints and tons of bear poop. It's the first time I've ever seen bear prints this whole trail. Dang they have big paws! Lol. Its funny, at one part of the trail, someone wrote "bear" in sticks and an arrow pointing right. My thought was, so someone saw a bear, then stood there and took the time to spell out b-e-a-r with sticks? Not only that but I stood there for a good 2 minutes trying to figure out what those letters spelled (it wasn't very clear). It's a good thing there wasn't an aggressive bear hiding in those bushes or we would all be screwed! Lol

So, apparently not only can I read Kyle's mind but I answer his thoughts before he even finishes thinking them. Haha! In the afternoon we were sitting on the side of a hill hiding in the shade from the heat. I asked him a question and he turned his head towards his backpack, and I immediately said "don't get it, it's too far away." Then he told me, wow you replied before the thought even completely manifested in my head! (he was about to get his bandana out of his backpack). Haha, you're too slow Kyle! It's funny, we also both have a scar in the exact same place on our face. Maybe we were twins in a previous life. Except Kyle has an actual twin in this life.

Oh!! My most epic revelation of the day: I put insoles in my 5 fingers!! Holy crap why the hell didn't I think of that 1,100 miles ago?!?! Lol!! Damn, now i can walk sooooo much faster! The thing about those 5 finger shoes is that when you're backpacking in them, if you step on a rock the wrong way or stub your toe it hurts like hell. So I always had to walk kinda slow. Now with the insoles I have a little extra padding so I can go waaaay faster. Yay!!! :D I still can't believe it took me this long to think of putting insoles in my shoes! DUH!! Lol :)