Farewell to Mt. Shasta

Well, now I'm behind in the blog again due to some weird connection problem. I'll get into that in the next post, but first I have to finish our stay at Lake Shastina. We managed to stretch out our water usage for 10 days when we just had to leave.

Lest you think every day is perfect, we had two days of extreme wind and clouds. But I even enjoyed our view with the clouds.


And to answer Marti and Paul who commented that they can never get a picture of the mountains in the Northwest without clouds, you mean like this?


But finally the winds died down and the sun returned. We returned to Castle Crags State Park for the gentle Root Creek Trail. I had read it was a peaceful walk through the woods with a 150 foot waterfall at the end. Well, it was peaceful, but we never saw a waterfall unless you count this one.


However I was captivated by this pretty wildflower. I'm sure somebody out there knows what it is.


And I finally got a picture that I think is a decent balance between the white snow and dark trees. But I'm sure a filter would help like E Squared and Mui suggested.

I'll leave you with a few Mt. Shasta facts. Dave had asked if the mountain always has snow on it. We had wondered the same thing and asked at the Sisson Museum in the city of Mt. Shasta. (Nice museum, worth the trip) Although the snow does melt on the south and west slopes, there are glaciers on the north and northeast slopes, so they remain white. Mt. Shasta is 14,161 ft. (4,317 meters) tall and consists of four major volcanic cones. The Shastina Cone, which you can see on the left erupted about 9500 years ago, while the latest erruption from the Hotlum Cone at the peak was only about 200 years ago. Yikes! Although we were assured that was a minor eruption, I don't think I would want to live at the base.