silver falls


the lodge


chugging toward shasta


nightfire



day 30 Salem, Oregon to Mount Shasta, CA
june 30

i was eager to get the hell out of dodge but we took a bike ride and discovered the actual splendid part of Silver Falls. the lodge (which we never saw during the horrendous smokey tent erection and bedding down at the campground) was built in the 30s out of stone and timber with rafters and wood carvings near an impressive water fall. and the land, once we steered away from the teeming RVs and the tent city, was very beautiful.

driving south, i said jokingly to Andrew "wave to Ron if he drives by..." because Ron was leaving San Francisco to drive north to Portland as we were driving south. and then i realized - this is the 21st century! we can INTERSECT using MODERN TECHNOLOGY. with cell phones and internet maps, we made a plan to meet at a REMOTE campground on forest service land outside of Mt. Shasta, that mystical snowcovered bump that often manifests fluffy donut clouds around its nippley peak.

we stopped in Ashland to sip dynamite espresso, do some internet research and shop for dinner at a beautiful and bountiful food coop. finding Mt. Shasta was, of course, easy. finding the campsite and Ron was more complex and we went WAY the hell up a little mountain before we realized the error in our ways (by talking to a man in a pickup truck who told us, no, we were not on the way to Castle Lake, we were on our way to Mumbo Lake. Whoops!).

we eventually found Ron and set up a beautiful camp with him. very primitive and absolutely perfect for our last night of camping on the trip. Andrew grilled a stellar dinner for us, albeit at 10 pm, then we had a campfire and looked at the stars and ate cherries and dates until we had to get horizontal.