Lassen Volcanic National Park

On Wednesday, we visited Lassen Volcanic National Park.

On our drive to the park, we saw Mt Shasta in the distance...

Dwayne said it was about 60 miles away from us...

...or 82 miles by road!

 We got into the park and found a site at Manzanita Lake that we could fit into (more on that later) and then decided to drive through the park. We stopped at Loomis Museum for some additional information and then headed out in the Jeep.

One of the first places we stopped was a route along the California trail.

The trail went through this area.

Some pretty flowers along the way!

A little later we stopped at "Hot Rock" - see the picture of Victorians in front of a rock?

There is Dwayne next to the (not) Hot (anymore) Rock!

From the back side. Amazing that a rock of this size would have been thrown from the volcano.

A little further along - a good view of Lassen Volcano from Devastated Area.

 Information boards by the parking lot:

 We hiked the trail through the Devastated Area.

 There were a number of sign boards with interesting information on the trail.

Another view of Lassen Peak

There were campgrounds on either side of Summit Lake.

Beautiful lake.

 Beautiful views all around us as we drove...

Can you see the lake way out there? When I later asked a ranger he surmised it was Lake Almanor - probably about 30 miles away.

The park road took us around Lassen Peak so we could see other sides of it -

Another beautiful lake...

I think this was Lake Helen.

We stopped at Bumpass Hell Parking Area, but the walkway was closed for renovations. However, they had information about an observation station here that monitors earth movement and magma development. Since we have been recently reading about and seeing videos of the volcanic eruption in Hawaii, and since we were right near volcano that has erupted about 100 years ago, I was glad to see that someone was monitoring it!

I think that satellite dome is part of the monitoring equipment, and the view is spectacular!

Continuing on the road...

Beautiful views...

... beautiful flowers...

Dwayne thinks that he read at the Visitor's Center that the large rock on the side of Lassen Peak is itself 500' tall!

 A little further we came to Sulphur Works - since Bumpass Hell trail is temporarily closed, this is the only easily accessible thermal area.

I can't imagine staying and dining where the smell of rotten eggs is so prevalent!

The mud pots were bubbling merrily away...

I put two videos up on YouTube: Video 1  Video 2  Each is 5-6 seconds long - you can thank me for enduring the smell to take the videos so you can watch without discomfort!

View back up the hill from the Sulphur Works.

Thermal area looking down the streambed area.

 We enjoyed our drive, though it was a bit tiring to have to do it in the day we checked in... but we felt we needed to because the only site we could find to fit Miss Doozie into was only available for one night (well, you could only pay for one night at a time because it was a "group" site and if a group reserved it, then they had priority). I had read that they had sites that were 45' long... and, they did, but they weren't a straight 45'. The site we got was a "pull thru" but you could only pull through if you bend in the middle (a truck pulling a trailer). We backed in, and had our front and back tires on the asphalt, but the middle was hanging over the curve of the pull through and our back end was overhanging the outside of the curve. All of the pull throughs that I saw had at least one and possibly many trees in the curved part of the pull through - no way a non-bendable 43' motorhome could pull through!

But, we had a nice place to leave the bus for the day while we traveled around the park,

And it was nice and cool overnight. When the camp hosts came through checking sites on Wednesday evening, they left it marked as "one night available", so I guess we could have stayed Thursday night as well, but there was no cellular service on any of our providers, so we decided to head out on Thursday to find other adventures.