In the middle of the night I heard the familiar wub wub of EDM coming from somewhere. It was strange, since we were up on the edge of a canyon, 4000 feet above the bottom. Then I remembered the music festival in Belden. I thought it would be over by Sunday night, but it wasn’t.
When we rolled into town at 8 am we were greeted by the dazed festival goers. Their tents were a mess and few people were awake. We made our way to the restaurant, afraid their might be a lot of people.
Lucky for us, the hungover ravers weren’t quite ready for breakfast when we were, so we had the place to ourselves. I ordered the chicken fried steak and then went to the store to get enough food to get me to Chester, 45 miles away. The steak was great, but the groceries were expensive.
Next we climbed out of Belden. It was a 6000 foot climb during the hottest part of the day. Luckily, water was plentiful on the climb. We stopped at a creek and took a swim (well, set down in the water, it wasn’t very deep) and had lunch.
We passed a trail crew on the way up. The first I’ve seen so far. It’s cool to see people working on the trail. I’m glad someone does it. It makes my life a lot easier.
Eventually we got to the top and had a great view of Lassen Peak. We should be entering the national park in a couple of days.
I thought we were done with snow after a totally snow free day yesterday, but we found some. This was at mile 1298.3.
Finally, we crossed 1300 miles today. Tomorrow on the way to town we’ll pass the halfway mark.