Mt Shasta...Dunsmuir...Lake Shasta

From then, it’s a blaze of stops to check on our own little and much neglected ‘babies’: Source of Sacramento, THE headwaters of the giant river that feeds much of Northern AND Southern California. Then, it’s off to Hedge Creek Falls, a failed attempt at Dunsmuir’s Shasta Shade and then a ‘faithful’ view of the Tip of Shasta. Faithful? Because the view of the mountain is supposed to be grand here, but this visit, unfortunately, provides nothing but a view of grand raindrops in front of our noses along the way. We add the beautiful impression to our journal and hightail it again to check out that dammed Shasta. The one that folks keep exchanging out the stamp for chunks of polished glass and such. Well, we quickly secure the cargo and I make $0.50 out of the deal!!! Woo—hoo! Apparently, there’s a geoca$h in the area? Now, as we’re repairing and recarving a stamp for this little baby, we get a grand display of a sunset—we otherwise would have missed. Fortunately, the extra trouble to repair this box doesn’t go un-repaid.

Shakespeare…Weed…Peace

We then continue to hang out with our friend William. Shakespeare in Ashland, that is. We’d already found this particular letterbox years ago but the stamp had since been replanted and we just HAD to have the new incredible image for our journal—so we set out to retrace our steps, sans clues, to this letterbox—dodging mega-raindrops along the way. Sated but drenched, once we add this stamp to our journal, we continue South—this time aiming for Weed. Weed, being that grand city in the North—the very one that we’d avoided some couple hundred times we’d previously passed through (quite quickly, I might add) in the area. In fact the closest we’d ever gotten to Weed previously was that one trip when I attempted 700 miles in a day and simply just had to pull over for a nap—that’s when I found the Weed Airport! This time we’re in Weed in search of peace. We blaze through the college town and a dozen miles beyond and soon find ourselves asking Why? We eventually find Pax and tranquility in one of the most unique settings we’d ever before experienced. This time, we’re dodging giant snowflakes every step along the way. Nothing like finding peace in the undisturbed snow amidst the shadows of heroes!!!

Rogue River...Gold Hill, OR

2.13.2005 We awoke early the following morning and ventured out to find Shan’s Christmas box—not knowing it was actually in the very park we’d chosen to camp in the night prior. We quickly meandered a neat trail along the gorgeous Rogue River and secured Shan’s precious stamp in our journal; rather delighted to add another legerdemaine classic in the process (the gosling—a copy of JJ Lankes 1st stamp HH). One adventure down, how many more to go? We then set our sights upon a glimmer of hope in Gold Hill—just a few short miles further south along our route. We quickly locate the park and start upon our hike—stumbling upon a unique array of dams, canals and waterways along the way. Who knew this sort of engineering marvel existed so close along the interstate trail we traveled hundreds of times in the past. We quickly find the letterbox but are deflated a bit when we realize the stamp was nowhere to be found. Of course, being the ever prepared letterboxer errant that I am, I have my trusty pouch of letterboxing maintenance materials along for the ride (Ziploc freezer bags, pens, logbooks, markers—but the two items I forgot to pack this particular trek were my carving tool and extra carving medium). So, always wanting to leave a letterbox better than the way we found it I attempt to recreate the stamp in a piece of fir bark I find on the trail using my steel pen nib as the carving device. I succeed in carving a stamp (destroying my only ‘nice’ pen along for the trip) that will actually transfer ink from the bark to paper but otherwise the attempt was a dismal failure. So, it truly turned into a misadventure of sorts.

Seattle to San Diego & Back...

We began our rim to rim journey of the country the other day. Why, you may ask? Just because we really wanted to spend a nice relaxing week down on the Southern border. Of course, that thought is always great until you realize that the rim to rim drive exceeds some 1,200 miles of maniac-dodging highway driving along the way.

2.12.2005

WA Launch…Valley of the Rogue, OR

We quietly launched upon our trek from the quiet seaside town of Steilacoom in the northwesternmost state of the contiguous United States, armed with little more than a really thick book of clues, 3 sleeping bags (actually one Army issue modular sleeping bag and a standard REI bag), some victuals and a full tank of gas. We soon headed South. As a letterboxing errant should be ever prepared, we’d scoped out the 10 day forecast for the entire Western Coast and were rather excited to see that nothing but rain, rain and more rain was to be expected. What a lovely way to set out upon our journey! Never one to be deterred by the elements, we threw a couple of Gore Tex coats and a Tote umbrella into our horseless carriage just as a precaution. We soon were on our way. Stopped for a visit with a companion in P-town then continued on through the driving rain to the first stop for the evening. Ever challenged by the idea that $30 is WAY too much to spend for a hotel room for a single night, I had this great idea to camp and ‘roach’ motel it along the journey always trying to beat the $30 threshold. Well, our first night we splurged and found a campsite (in the driving rain) for $12.It turned out to be an awesome site—as it was a campsite that had ‘hot water’ showers (always a luxury in camping circles).