1400 miles in and we are still in the same state! Well, technically we are, but we've decided the northern California is quite different from the rest of the state (It sits better with us that way too. Come on, how could it possibly take over 3 months to walk through just one state?).
In the last week we've traveled through some of the strangest towns and terrain. We'll start with the towns:
Towns
1. Belden consisted of 18 residents and any weekend residents at the 'resort' (aka RV park). We heard that every weekend the 'town' hosted raves along the Feather River, including the latest rave of bikers. Luckily we came on a weekday and stayed just a couple hours...
2. Chester was a small town with local fast food place that had 30 flavors of milkshakes and was the place to be. It was routine to see people run into the Post Office or store and just leave the car running. That was crazy for a weathered Baltimorian to see!
3. Our current town of residence, Burney, can be summarized by the fact the the only public computer is at the local pizza place where the Rotary and Citizens Patrol meet on a weekly basis.
Terrain
In the last week we've seen quite a few interesting sites as we've hastened our journey northward. We hiked through Lassen Volcanic National Park and northward. Lassen is very volcanically active. We've pasted a steam vent, a lake that was boiling, took a dip in a hot spring pool, and walked through a tunnel formed by an old lava flow that really looked like a subway tunnel, and hiked over more lava rocks than we would have liked. This morning we just completed a 30 mile odyssey on what is called the Hat Creek Rim. It is formed by an old lava flow that sits several hundred feet above the surrounding terrain. We hiked it mostly at night because this high plataeu has very few trees and no water. We heard strange things at night including toads that sounded like growling bears, and ran into one ton beasts that scared the living daylights out of me. I should have been familiar with them because there were cows! Even though we tripped a lot over the lava rocks, we still managed to hike 35 miles in less than 24 hours.
We are looking forward to finishing up northern California and head into Oregon before mid-August. Then we will finally REALLY be in a different state!
Track us and check out our updates as we begin our hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). On top of working towards the goal of completing the 2,650 mile trail, we also hope to raise that same amount in dollars for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. Check out our related links and our dedicated page through the Highlands Conservancy for more information and to donate.
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Hi from Spring Valley! We are doing quarterly water samples this week and Chris Beza from URS and I were talking about your trip. He said to tell you HI!. One of the URS field team is currently doing a long hiking trip covering the Appalachian trail with his girl friend. Update: all our residential sampling partners are making it relatively easy these days to get it done...even the Chil...;-). Scott says the Sevenson field team will be packing up by the end of August. We might actually put in the deep wells this month! WE have 2 new RAB members and expect one more next month making it FULL! 4825 proposed plan Public Meeting will be in October...probably:-). In the mean time -keep on enjoying yourselves. You know I have hiked my share of lava fields so I really do know how awfully painful that can be if you trip.. and doing it at night makes that very likely! Hope your gloves and knee pads were on! Glad to hear all is well as you move north. Much love to you both, Carrie
ReplyDeleteYour descriptions this week are really scrumptious! and left me wanting to see some pics. Hope you are still stopping to take pics and smell the roses...it sounds like you are going so fast ...35 miles in one day!
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