Castle Crags, the Bear Sanctuary - Mile 1522.5 - 8/13

In the morning, Luanne cooked us a tasty breakfast and the three of them (with the company I their dogs) drove Spins and I to the post office. Saying goodbye, we went back into trail mode getting our packages. Spins was super excited about her new pack and all the space she now has and I was overjoyed with the brownies my mom sent me. We got back on trail around noon and started to hoof it up the big uphill ahead of us. Castle Crags is a really beautiful mountain but it's rather hot and the water is hard to come by. On my way up I saw bear tracks an then bear crap all over. A few miles later you could only imagine what I saw running uphill away from me as quick as it could. Bear number 1...check! In addition to all the bear-age, the trail had a huge amount of moths flying everywhere the entire way up the mountain and these tasty little morsels happen to be on the beta lists of things to eat so I wasn't to surprised to see the bear. A few mile later as I was climbing up a switchbacks I heard rustling below and a grunting noise. I looked down to see two bears wrestling. I couldn't tell if it was play or serious but I said "Holy Crap!" kind of loud to myself and they both heard me and took off!! (thankfully in the direction away from me) At the end of the day I arrived at the spring I was going to camp at but there was no camping...so we litered up on water and hauled another mile or two uphill at night until we got to a nice spot.