I'm looking out on a beautiful mountain Meadow where I'm staying now and there is Internet so I can blog and I can watch things like Netflix and Amazon Prime and stuff like this. Yesterday I went up to Castle Lake with friends and we blew up our Sevylor Kayaks which I think are French or something. However, I hear there are hard bodied kayaks for rent up here so we might rent one or two next time we go to save us the blow up time (even though I have a 12 volt electric pump that runs from a cigarette lighter in my 4 wheel drive truck.
The two biggest problems for me are that I've had a little problem with the altitude combined with the heat. Where I live on the coast it seldom (this time of year) goes above about 75 degrees outside so no one has air conditioners where i live on the coast of California. But, while I was in Santa Barbara a few weeks ago I bought a portable air conditioner because I know from living up here in Mt. Shasta in the past it gets into the high 90s and sometimes 100s here. And almost every day nearby in Redding( about 60 miles away) it is about 100 to 115 now almost every single day now in August. Even up at Castle lake it was at least 88 degrees even at 6000 feet where the lake is located.
So far, since we got here smoke from fires hasn't been a problem even though at a distance I can see smoke rising within 50 miles to the east of us but since the prevailing wind is likely to the East or headed South it is going away from us. But, one of my friends who lives here says that two years ago they had smoke really bad about 40 days straight until some time in September then. And when you drive up from Redding there is still one really large burn area along Interstate 5 that is still trying to recover where all the trees are burned for miles. But, they did a lot of work to make sure that Interstate 5 wouldn't be flooded out by mud debris right after that fire when the winter and spring rains come. (Interstate 5 is the main freeway artery from Seattle to San Diego by the way).
So, temperatures here in Shasta have ranged from about 81 to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit so far here in August. And night time lows around 50 here in August. If you are at higher altitudes this changes a lot however. The temperature usually goes down at least 10 degrees by 5000 or 6000 feet altitude and more as you go up the mountain to the top. It might be 30 or 40 degrees on top of the mountain with 100 mph winds even if it is 100 degrees or more in town. Most of the snow has melted off the mountain but there is still a little above 10,000 or 11,000 feet.
Last night it was so warm for social distancing we started having dinner outside at my friend's home at around 9 pm.
Then after dinner we sat out and watched the Perseid Meteor Shower and watched the milky way galaxy because that is possible here because there aren't the city lights of other places. We also watched satellites go through the milky way galaxy above us. The sun periodically reflects from many of them so this was great fun sitting in the dark on my friend's 2 1/2 acres watching the sky like old times maybe up at Horse Camp at 8000 feet in the late 1960s and early 1970s talking around the campfire way back when.
No comments:
Post a Comment