Miles hiked: 22.8.
It was the clearest morning I've had in a couple hundred miles and the sunrise colors were nearly-normal as I walked the last 7ish miles down to where the trail crosses I-5 just south of the later's highest point. As the trail passed through clearings in the forest I could see down into the valleys below and see how the smoke had settled down there overnight as the air cooled and sank. Thin streams of it were flowing over the pass that I-5 goes through, sinking down from Ashland down into the lower valley that eventually leads to Yreka.
I took a signed shortcut down an old log road to get the last 1/2 mile to Callahan's Lodge, which located right off the interstate a bit under a mile from where the PCT crosses. This turned out to be a great stop; it's a little bit of a fancy place, with cloth napkins in the restaurant and names like "White Pine" for the hotel rooms. But they still let us dirty hikers in and we can shower or do laundry if we want (I didn't) and can get resupply boxes sent there and can eat in the restaurant and they even have a room upstairs with sheets over the furniture to keep it clean where we can hang out and fiddle around with our stuff and on the Internet. I had French toast for breakfast then sorted my food and opened my packages with new shoes and socks and did my bloggy stuff. Then I decided I ought to eat lunch there too and had a ridiculous smoked salmon BLT with thick chewy bacon and a bunch of flaked smoked salmon that was smoked thick in the Pacific Northwest style like my dad makes, not the thin lox, and the whole thing in a ciabatta roll all drippy with oil. And of course something like that requires a beer to wash it down.
Got back to the business of hiking around 12:30 or 1. The trail passed under the interstate then climbed up the shoulder of a ridge away from the pass and around a big tower called Pilot Rock. I saw my third rattlesnake of the trip (1 more and they'll be tied with bears), laying in a patch of sun on the trail working on digesting some big lump in its midsection. About 5 miles past I-5 I took a nap on a little point and right after I woke up Speakerbox walked by, who i think I haven't seen since VVR or maybe Tuolumne about 700 miles ago. It still surprises me when this happens; we've probably been just a couple days apart for the last month.
The trail continued along the ridge through Douglas fir and incense cedar and white and perhaps subalpine fir and now and then groves of oaks. I had passed through a few patches of full-on wildflowers over the last hundred miles and despite the date I thought I might be getting far enough north to catch up with a bit of spring. But along this ridge we are well toward the end of summer, with the Oregon-grapes and Blue Elderberry and another short bush with red berries I don't know the name of all gone to fruit, and the shoulder high thimbleberries along the side of the trail already past peak fruiting, and really the only flowers left are on the thistle and some little white ones and a single lonely columbine.
I made camp in a dry grassy meadow and watched one of the more dramatic fire-smoke sunsets I've ever seen, with the sun dipping behind a band of cloud/smoke and electrifying some clouds below it then reemerging as a glowing disk slicing through those electrified clouds then finally sinking below the low western horizon but leaving an orange smudge there that lasted for another 40 minutes while I finish dinner and have a little spike buck wander right through camp and write my journal and read a bit then drift off to sleep.
Birds:
Brown Creeper
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Oregon Junco
Spotted Towhee
Steller's Jay
MacGillivray's Warbler
House Wren
Hermit Warbler
Mountain Chickadee
Common Raven
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