​July 24, 2017 

Squaw Valley Creek – Mount Shasta (1482.18-1498.7)

16.52 miles 

Woke up this morning knowing that we had to start the day with a big climb, but motivated to get into town. The climb ended up being not nearly as bad as we thought it might be (this seems to be a common trend lately… I hope it continues), and soon we were at the top and beginning the descent down towards the highway. The trail was mostly in shaded forest again, though we occasionally got some really awesome views of Mount Shasta and some other really cool jagged rock formations. 

A few days ago, a blog follower, Bubba, who lives in Mount Shasta got in contact with us and offered us a place to crash in his rental cottage, which we very gratefully accepted. When we got down to the road, Bubba was there to pick us up, along with his three incredibly sweet and adorable children. The cottage was amazing, and we spent the afternoon showering, doing laundry, and just relaxing a bit. In the evening, we got a ride into town and had dinner at this amazing Thai place. 

After dinner, we grabbed some beer and snacks from the gas station and watched an incredible sunset from the streets of Mount Shasta as we waited for Bubba to pick us up. Back at the cottage, we had an intensely competitive board game night before heading to bed (I won at Battleship thanks to my incredibly strategic ship placement, and I don’t want to talk about what happened during our two games of Uno).