Wow! We are surprised and delighted to learn that our friends actually do follow our travels via this blog. I confess, I don't read my friends' blogs as faithfully as I should and often must read a month of posts to figure out what happened to one friend's health or another friend's RV engine.
I'll bring you up to date in a couple of posts and a few pictures, now that I've read the instructions on how to insert photos! First I'll share our continuing adventures in California.
We headed north after leaving the Sacramento area and enjoyed a great week near Mt Shasta. Snow still blocked the road to the top so we scrambled across the melting piles for this picture:
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| Yes, John is in shorts! |
Salad picnics are a staple of our lifestyle and several were snarfed down within sight of Shasta as well as a tasty sip of wine.
The cool beauty of Castle Lake was recommended by the locals. Natives once thought it was the home of the evil spirit Ku-Ku-Pa-Rick, who made eerie echoing noises in the winter, now known to be the result of ice movement above the lake. While small, Castle is very deep and has been studied by scientists since 1938, first for trout stocking purposes and later for algae growth control.
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| Father and son time |
One hot afternoon, we walked the trail to Hedgecreek Falls, to find many of the locals chillin' in the clear cold pool and absorbing the water's renowned healing/spiritual powers.
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| All ages and shapes |
Lava Beds National Monument was another of our destinations, while not very picturesque, we learned of its tragic history. To make the area "safe" for settlers, our government wiped out the Native Modoc tribe, murdering Captain Jack and several others, then banishing the rest to Oklahoma.
As evening came we discovered the caves, which would have been interesting to visit since they are "accessible", but were closed for the night. We attempted to take a shorter route back to the campground, via Miracle Lake, but soon discovered that passage was blocked by snow drifts!
Nature draws us constantly and our wanderings often include waterfalls, mountains, lakes, and rivers. On our visit to McCloud Falls, we captured a rainbow:
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| Can you see the faint rainbow? |
