From Dunsmuir we ascended 1300 ft elevation through the Cantara Loop, past Mt Shasta City to Black Butte. Black Butte is a big cinder cone north of Mt Shasta which came up around 10,000 yrs ago, hence its name.

This is a junction where the old Southern Pacific line (now Union Pacific mainline) turns northeast over to Klamath Falls, however the line splits and a branch heads up to Weed and over Siskiyous. There is a wye track which allowed out train to turn around to head back to Dunsmuir, however we were delayed 90 minutes to wait for an express container train called the “Z train” headed up into Oregon, then the dispatcher couldn’t get detection of the switch so the conductor had to go out, throw the switch manually and talk the engineer through the red signal.

The major benefit was that I was able to take this photo of the sunset behind us while waiting.

The home of Jack London still exists here, at least half of it is preserved. What I find most intersting most interesting is the railroad mainline goes right down the middle of the street.

I disembarked the train in the middle of the road where I met my friends, walked 2 blocks to a dockside restaurant,then back to car. While driving out to hotel I snapped this shot.

the morning sun lights up dew drops shimmering in the wind.

Dew drops on morning grass

sheesh, it has set records this year for rainfall, snowfall, etc. now June 7 was finally sunny with 7 day forcast of clear and sunny for first time since January. Garden partially planted. have to be replanted. fighting various issues with existing plants. think I will go back to my inside activities. wait, no its outside time and we have guests coming from India next week. yikes!!

as I was walking to the truck in the rain to go to work I spotted this iris. couldn't resist.

What is he talking about? The final marble statue which is of Jesus arrived from our marble sculptor in India. Jesus holds pole position in our line of Masters or Gurus. He is viewed both in India and at Ananda as a Great Master of Yoga.

“I wasn’t sent to the West,” Yogananda often told his audiences, “by Christ and the great masters of India to dogmatize you with a new theology. Jesus himself asked Babaji to send someone here to teach you the science of Kriya Yoga, that people might learn how to commune with God directly. I want to help you to attain actual experience of Him, through your daily practice of Kriya Yoga.” – Paramhansa Yogananda

Our line of gurus is 5 deep which is the reason we returned to India to commission the same artist in Jaipur, India to hand carve this statue of Jesus sitting in meditation. He is sitting in lotus posture with hands upturned. The facial features were drawn from a photograph of the Hoffman painting similar to the one which many of our meditation altars. The funds were donated to Ananda Village as our annual community Christmas gift by its members and it just arrived last week