Northern California

September 1
It is already September! A nice pleasant morning, cloudy, but in the 60s. After a little looking at the variety of trees around, we travelled to the Weaverville trails. More nice, easy stuff, that I had fun on with a cool landscape - a little scrubby and certainly hotter and drier than the coast, but not too extreme in the early afternoon. Even got to chase a few little lizards down the trail! We did see some 90s as the day wore on though.

I just liked this dry creek bed of metamorphic rocks

We found a nice little spot to park in Lassen National Forest late afternoon, so plenty of time to enjoy the solar shower, and make some salads and rice pilaf.  Early evening we noticed a tire was hissing though! Rudy found a piece of metal in there, so we headed back to the nearest town and were able to find a tire plug kit. Some locals were nice enough to lend help (and a better tool to work with the beefy tire than what came in the kit) and Rudy was able to get the repair done and we were back to camp by our normal bed time - crises averted!




September 2
Chilly again, but the sun makes it feel nice pretty quickly. Bought a new National Park Pass and made use of it at Lassen Volcanic National Park. I really enjoyed our day here. The park is small, but decently maintained and educational, and even on Friday of Labor Day Weekend was not terribly populated, plus there were a lot of cool things (to us anyhow) to see and do, even just driving through, there is a lot of cool sights. I could easily spend a week here! First stop was the Hot Rock - a big chunk of cooling lava that was carried five miles by an avalanche triggered by the first 1915 eruption. Next was the Devastation Area, where we learned more about the 1915 eruptions, and the prior one 27,000 ago, and the geology of the area.

Lassen Peak, as seen from the recovering 'Devastation Area'

A lava rock from the 1915 eruption that cooled too fast

Then we took a little hike to Cold Boiling Lake, where gasses bubbled up in places, but without the heat of the nearby hydrothermal areas.

Not the most impressive sight, but kinda nifty

Cold Boiling Lake as seen on the way to Bumpass Hell

We continued on to Bumpass Hell, one the aforementioned hydrothermal areas - we could smell the sulfur from half a mile away!

Cool folded rocks along the trail

We hiked back for some lunch, then made the trek to the top of Lassen Peak - a challenging climb (2,000 feet in 2.5 miles up to an altitude ~10,500 feet), but a mostly smooth trail with lots of little interpretive signs along the way to catch our breath.

Start of the hike - can you find Vulcan's Eye?

Getting steep the final mile

The final summit!

The crater - if you look hard, Mt. Shasta is back there

We made one more stop at Sulfur Works, which was previously a sulfur mine + touristy hot springs area before being given to the National Park.

Another view of Lassen Peak

It was already time to find camp when we left the park, and it didn't take long to find a spot on a forest service road that wasn't super nice, but adequate to make some lentils and cornmeal and chill out (in the van - excessive wasps around!)

September 3
Another cool morning, good for making some hot beverages and getting a couple hours further east in the first of a few mellow driving days to get to Salt Lake City. We stopped at Greagle where Rudy made a 4 hour loop on the bike and I did some 'heat training' by doing some laying around in the sun. Not as much public land in this area, but we found a decent spot to park after exploring some slightly rugged forest and logging roads in Plumas National Forest. Some solar shower cleanup, mac 'n cheese, and the 'Red Wedding' episode of Game of Thrones - I would love for the 6th book to come out before we watch the 6th season, but I'm not optimistic!