Day 117: Fire Planning in Ashland

August 5, 2017
Mile 1701.37 Campsite to Mile 1715.20 Ashland, CA

Finally into town today. The hike was longer than I really wanted (15 miles) and it wasn’t until 1:00 PM that we got to Callahan’s Lodge. Before we got there, though, we came across some trail magic and had cherry colas while sitting in some lawn chairs.

The lodge that we’re staying at is like a normal hotel, except they’re very hiker friendly. A lot of places say that they are hiker friendly and want our business, but will often do everything they can to put us out of site from the rest of their customers. It never really feels like we’re wanted in some places. But here we feel so welcomed. They encouraged us to sit in the lobby and use their outlets and then for $65 we were able to camp on their lawn along with showering and laundering in their hiker facility in addition to all you can eat spaghetti dinner and all you can eat pancakes breakfast.

Once we cleaned up Glowworm and I along with Nonstop who has been hiking with is recently went to town to get some linch and do our resupply. The hitches to and from town were definitely some of the most interesting of the hike. The one into town was in the back of a pickup on I-5 (absolutely terrifying) and the one back to Callahan’s was in an RV.

The topic on hand is the fires on Oregon especially around Crater Lake. Right now the trail into the park and around the park is closed and the fire is growing. We really have no idea what to do. There’s no good bail out options so we really don’t know. We’ve been tossing around a few different ideas, but I don’t want to delve into all of them. Hopefully we’ll have some better information tomorrow.