The Joy of Dumb Luck

For the past few days, Kelly and I have been relaxing in a national forest just outside the small town of Mt Shasta, which is located in far northern California.  The town sits in the shadows of its namesake – Mt Shasta volcano (elevation 14,197 ft).

Looking east towards Mt Shasta

Having driven past the mountain many times, we’ve often admired it from the car, but have never stopped until this week.  The mountain happens to sit in the midst of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the largest forest system in California.  Combined the mountain and the high elevation forest seemed like a combination we felt would make for a nice resting place for a couple of days.

It was me who picked Fowlers Campground as our landing spot.  And I didn’t have much time to complete a lot of advance research … so if the place sucked, it would be me to blame.   As luck would have it , the past couple days here have been fantastic.

Sometimes a guy is just lucky.

Wednesday, we arrived to a mostly empty campground … it’s primitive, has two loops with roughly 18-20 spacious sites per.  Not sure what the crowds would be like through the weekend, we opted for a site off to itself and with the added bonus of a spacious grassy area opening up to a hillside.

Now, having seen the entire campground now in more detail, I think we have the best location … and Kelly deserves all the credit, as I was thinking about another one elsewhere.  As an added bonus, our spot is proving to be a great point of entry for deer and other forest critters … which has provided plenty of excitement for Lilly.

Our site

Lilly keeping an eye on things

There is nice river with three waterfalls near the campground.  Conveniently, our site is adjacent to a connector trail which links all three.  We’ve seen two waterfalls thus far, and plan to view the third before leaving in a couple days.  The trails here are nice and since this is a national forest, dogs are welcome on-leash – not so in California State or National Parks.

Once the trailer was set-up, we went out to find the “Middle Falls”, the closest of the three to our location.

The trail to Middle Falls

The trail to Middle Falls

Middle Falls below…

Stopping to admire Middle Falls

This morning (Thursday) we went looking for Lower Falls, which made for a great morning hike – this one following the river.

The river is a local favorite for fly fishing, and provides plenty of access points to the water.  Lilly wasn’t interested in the fish, but could not get enough of the rocks – climbing all over them (and only slipping into the water a few times).

Eventually, we arrived to Lower Falls (above).  While this particular falls is not much of an attraction per se, the general area is gorgeous.  It’s so nice to be back at high elevation and in amongst the trees.

Eventually, we began making our way back to camp.

Along the way, I wanted to grab some firewood and decided to split this felled tree with my knee.

Upon arrival back to camp, it was time for lunch.  The remainder of the day was spent … lazy.