camping my life away...

[katster]

It's not quite as snowy now, as it's mid-July, but this is Mt. Shasta, which at 14,162ft (4,312m) is the second largest volcano in the Cascade mountain range, only a few hundred feet shorter than Mt. Rainier (14,410/4,392) up by Seattle. At the Mendocino Triple Junction, the San Andreas runs out to sea to make room for the Juan de Fuca plate to jam in between the Pacific and the North American Plates, and it is that action of the Juan de Fuca plate subducting under the North American that caused these giant mountains to form -- Lassen, Hood, St. Helens, Rainier, Baker, Adams, Glacier, Jefferson, the Three Sisters, Crater Lake, and of course, Shasta.

The town in the picture is called Mt. Shasta City, and it's where I sit right now, in an internet cafe, getting my net.fix. I'll have to go back to camp in a little bit (the trip was ostentatiously for the purpose of getting jillcaligirl to print her genealogy stuff. But I can log in too.)

It's a little harder, the campout this year, because we have all the relatives that my great-grandparents left behind in Minnesota, people like my Uncle Peanut and Uncle Junior, and their families. And if you ever hear jrenken do his Minnesota Accent, well, I was listening to my relatives talk, and my first thought is "Ohmigod, Cal nailed it."

My mom is still being annoying at times, and she gets frustrated when we don't leap to attention, but that's normal. And I got sunburned, but that's pretty normal too.

Oh yeah, I meant to mention and didn't. Mom turned one yesterday. That is, it's been a year since her stem-cell bone marrow transplant. We survived the first year, and now if we could just stop the arsenic related problems, we'd be doing really well. :)

Anyway, having fun. It turns out that SMS doesn't reach me as well, either in Mt. Shasta City or out at Lake Siskiyou where I'm staying, so my phone is just a phone. Blah.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I can't even explain how much I love that mountain.

[wjhansen.livejournal.com]

Wow! What a beautiful scene to be taking in. It makes me feel a bit cooler in the 90+ degree heatwave we're having here in Mineesota.

Yah, you betcha, don't-cha know. (We don't really talk that way, do we???) What part of Minnesota are they from??? The northerners tend to have more of that "accent" that everyone thinks us Minnesotans talk with! :)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Redding, the city a couple of hours south of the mountain, right now:
107 °F / 42 °C
Clear
Humidity: 15%
Dew Point: 50 °F / 10 °C
Wind: 7 mph / 11 km/h from the SW
(Last time I was there it was 118F. It's the dry heat that makes it even a tiny bit tolerable.)


Mount Shasta, the town at the base of the mountain, right now:

92 °F / 33 °C
Clear
Humidity: 21%
Dew Point: 46 °F / 8 °C
Wind: 4 mph / 6 km/h Variable

Again: The heat's dry, which is a good thing. :)

[wjhansen.livejournal.com]

Okay....so it's hotter (or as hot) there than it is here. Your humidity and dewpoint is much nicer than ours. Our dewpoint is in the 70s!!!

It's the snow in the picture that makes things feel a bit cooler.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

It's beautiful, but that's earlier in the year:
http://www.shastacam.com/ <-- currently

There are year-round glaciers on the mountain, but in hot dry years, there's a lot of visible grey cinder under the snow. This was a wet year with lots of snow, so it'll probably look like this most of the year.

(I grew up not far from katster, and I could see the mountain from my house.)

[nvdaydreamer.livejournal.com]

That's my mountain. :-) Go a bit further north, to Weed, and you'll find (safely in the cemetery thank you) the graves of two of my great-grandfathers, a great-grandmother, a grandfather, and my mother.

My grandma paints now and then, and I had her paint a picture of the mountain for me that's very much like the picture you've included. (Except without the city.)

Hang in there. After all, you could be enjoying the heat back in the valley.

[salinn.livejournal.com]

and Mt. Rainier is *my* mountain, although the Lake Siskiyou area and the Shasta area is gorgeous. Glad to hear from you.

[katster.livejournal.com]

The one time I went to Seattle, I stepped out and it was clear (*gasp*, I know, a strange concept for Seattle) and I could see Rainier. My first thought? "Oh my god, it's San Francisco with Mt. Shasta! I'm in *heaven*!"

-kat