Day 159 (20 June)

Miles 1151.9 to 1156.7 (4.8 Miles) Castella campground to Mt Shasta view camp

We sleep in and it feels amazing not having to get up before dusk. Not like we have been doing that lately, but whatever. We wake up because the sun is shining directly in our face and because it’s very windy. This is partly the reason why Dario did not sleep very well last night, as he was very worried about potential trees crashing down on us.

We are still in the tent when a lady in a small golf cart comes driving over to our campsite to let us know that we have camped in the wrong spot. There is a designated campsite reserved for PCT hikers and we are in the campsite next to it. However, she is very nice asking us if we would like some tokens to get a shower and if we would like a cup of coffee. How amazing! Her name is Mary and she is very interested in the PCT and in us. She comes back with two real towels, a lot of tokens which means a long shower, and with coffee and almond milk, which is delicious by the way.

We take down our tent and then I go and have a shower. Whilst I shower I also wash my dirty clothes. Then it is Dario‘s turn. After our showers we wait a bit to let our clothes dry and then make our way down to the highway to catch a ride. We don’t have to wait long, in fact, we wait for about five minutes when Max stops, an elderly gentleman from Carmel in Big Sur, visiting his daughter in Portland for her birthday. He says that he has been driving for many hours and has been very bored and hoping to be able to collect some hitchhikers to talk to. He is a bit disappointed that we are only asking for a ride to the next town, Dunsmuir, where we hope to get a delicious breakfast and an efficient resupply and hopefully fuel. He drops us off in the middle of town and first we make our way to a restaurant. It’s called the Wheelhouse and it's fabulous. We order two breakfast burritos and they turn out to be the best I have ever had. This is something we have to take home with us: how to make breakfast burritos.

We wait for a long time for our clothes to dry off completely outside and charge our electronic devices some more inside the restaurant, and catch up with friends and family through voice messages. We are not really in a rush because we only plan to do about 4 miles this afternoon. After a couple of hours in the Wheelhouse we make our way to IGA to buy groceries. Somehow we still have a lot of food left from the last stretch and therefore don’t need to buy as much. We just stock up and get some ice cream and go outside of the store to organize the resupply. Oh and we also got gas by asking in the Facebook PCT group if anybody knew where to buy fuel in Dunsmuir.

Now all we need to do is catch a ride back to Castella and start hiking. As people have already asked us previously, if we needed a ride we figure it’s probably easy to get out of Dunsmuir and make our way to the highway entrance. However we end up waiting for at least 30 minutes until a car pulls over and agrees to take us to the trailhead. This time our driver is a former PCT hiker called Grillman. He says he needs to do a couple of stops before dropping us off, which of course is not a problem for us. When he drops us off we quickly say our goodbyes and start hiking. Up, up, up we go. We are back in forest, the sun is shining bright, everything is green and blue around us. And the going is easy. We reach camp by about 6.45pm and do our usual set up routine, this time filming it to always be able to remember those daily routines we tend to forget the earliest.

Now we are in the tent and I am dictating my blog post on my phone. It’s very interesting and I don’t think I will be doing it again. Good night.