Travels with Twinkles: Dunsmuir, California

I take route 5 north over the immense Lake Shasta and climb uphill almost the entire drive to Dunsmuir, California. I am on my way to Klamath Falls Oregon but Dunsmuir sounds like a cool town to hang for a while and I decide to stop there. It’s part of my new motto, “No Worry, No Hurry”. Signs of last summers forest fires are evident on the distant slopes, hopefully this year won’t be so bad. The view of Mount Shasta is impressive, it really stands out as the top half remains snow covered and we have a blue sky today. It is a volcano that erupted a few centuries ago and will surely do its again some day, I wouldn't want to be nearby when this occurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Shasta

View from highway 5 approaching Dunsmuir

The town of Dunsmuir is just off route 5 and it has a rather nice old downtown with nice looking restaurants, cafes, bars, a bakery and various shops. It’s a near perfect tourist stop. They also claim to be the “Home of the Best Drinking Water on Earth” and there are water fountains around town where you can fill bottles. As there is a water bottling plant in town, there might be some truth to these claims, I will have to try it. Dunsmuir is also a town near the Pacific Crest Hiking Trail that runs from Mexico to Canada. It’s a popular resting and resupply spot for the through hikers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunsmuir,_California

Map on the visitors center building

One of the public water fountains in Dunsmuir where you
can get the "Best water on Earth"

Typical downtown scene

Freight trains and fishing are important here

Do not open the door !

Seems to be friendly warning

The California Theater is the dominant building in downtown

Dunsmuir is on the Sacramento River with great fishing and many waterfalls. I went to the Hedge Creek Falls on the edge of town and immediately remembered that I had been there before. We traveled through this area a few years previous on our way to ? and stopped to see this same waterfall.

There is almost always some one in the pool at the bottom

Nearby is an old steam Locomotive and a caboose that I remember taking a photo off. Dunsmuir is a railroad town with a small station / museum and freight trains still run frequently on this line.

By chance, I am here for the Thursday afternoon farmers market starting about 4 PM, not a big one, but with one vendor selling great fruit, the fresh peaches and tomatoes look especially good and I get a few. People are buying flats of them, woman in front of me in the line said she was making peach cobbler, that made my mouth water. There was a local musician playing who was very good, I sat at the adjacent brew pub outside patio in the sun, had a beer and listened, it doesn’t get much better !

In the morning I check out the Train Depot when I see the train crew walking across the tracks with the usual stuff, packs, metal crew box and then I hear the horn of an approaching freight train. It’s a crew change and It affords me some good photo ops. The Amtrak depot is open although no one seems to be around and inside is a really folksy train mural on one wall. This town has done a good job at saving their old railroad stuff. All over downtown they have taken old railroad semaphore train signals and used them to decorate the street corners. I also noticed that the original glass insulators are still on the poles on the street adjacent to the tracks.

Just like in New Jersey, the train crew carries all sorts of baggage

Some graffiti can be great, but that may be a lie ?

The train depot has is painted to look like a locomotive is inside

A great old Southern Pacific Lines sign

Nice train mural inside depot

Patriotic bunting on depot

Up the street from the rail yard is a long mural painted on a retaining wall and a woman is working on the mural. I go up and talk to her, she is the artist, Pat Devereaux, who is a local art teacher who started this mural as a school project 20 some years ago and continues to maintain it. She told me how she came here 25 years ago when this town was virtually unknown. Her husband was a musician who started a band when there were none around which caught on and started a local music scene. They are portraying in the mural which is a microcosm of the town, it’s truly a beautiful thing.

Pat is an inspiration

The band

Base Ball game, Babe Ruth played an exhibition game
at the old Dunsmuir ball field

She said that she usually puts a flying saucer in her paintings

The Dunsmuir school mural project projects "Be nice to each other"

Before I forget, this town also has a great historic hardware store, it’s a town attraction in itself, not to be missed.

The best small hardware store I've ever seen, they even sell record albums

I travel a few miles away to Castle Crags State Park and drive to the trailhead for the short 1/4 mile trail to the Vista Point. Vista Point is pretty great as you get a clear view of both Mt. Shasta and the Castle Crag Peaks. I then go a more serious hike on the Castle Crag Trail which is about 2 1/2 miles of strenuous uphill mostly through forest. I also take a side trail to the Indian Spring which is more like a creek coming out around a huge bolder. There is a sign saying “Don’t Pollute” as it is the water supply for the Castle Crag State Park campground. I reached a point on the trail with good views of the Castle Crags, but did not go to the very end of the trail. I hated stopping so close to the end, but stopped when it started to become more of a rock scrambling thing than a hike. The 2 1/2 mile steep downhill back to the parking lot was easier on the lungs but more of a strain on other muscles. Back at the van, I drove out the Park main entrance and to another park area across the road where where you can park on the river and wade in the fast flowing ice cold water. I rinsed by sweaty tee shirt in the cold stream and gave myself a partial sponge bath, it was most refreshing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Crags

Castle Crags from the trail

Mt. Shasta from the trail

It was mostly a shaded forest hike

Another closer view of Castle Crags

The Indian Spring Trail took me to the base of the peaks

Lots of water flowing out of the rocks here form an oasis

Entering Castle Crags wildnerness

This was relief !

I though there might be something interesting in one of the local Dunsmuir bars in the evening as it was Saturday night, but they were dead, the town mostly closes after dark. I then made the mistake of parking overnight adjacent to the railroad tracks and about every two hours was awoken by the train horn, the crossing bells and the scretching of the freight car wheels as they negotiated the curve.

I hung around in the the morning to go to the rail depot museum at 10 AM. There were two volunteers manning the museum who perked up when I told them I am an ex railroad employee. They didn’t think they have ever had anyone from New Jersey before. The museum is very well done, they have lots of historic photos of the rail yard in its boom steam train days. They also have much on town history and a sizable collection of Indian baskets and arrowheads. The rail yard back in the steam days had a maintenance shop, a roundhouse that held many Locomotives, a turntable and a much larger two story depot building. The advent of the diesel locomotive reduced the labor workforce dramatically and with time and decay most of the old buildings including the train depot were demolished. Currently there is one Amtrak passenger train a day, everything else is freight trains.