Lassen Volcanic National Park

Day 2, June 7, Lassen Volcanic National Park

Got a late start and did not even eat breakfast. The latter was a mistake. Most of the delay was due to a lengthy phone call with son Jason. He is good.

We drove east over what I thought would be secondary and back roads on a route shorter and more scenic than the freeway. It was shorter. However, this is a very rural and undeveloped area and as we pushed deeper into the woods the pavement initially gave way to gravel and then to dirt amidst increasing concern about the reliability of the map and the impact on the car before we rejoined blacktop. It was only 45 miles to the park’s northern entrance, but it took an hour to get there.  The road going through the park was closed near the southern entrance due to the large snowfall this year which is why I was going north.  That meant we did not get to see the hydrothermal areas.

Most of the park will not be open until July this year due to the large snowfall, but that means lots of water for LA and the Central valley farms.

At the northern entrance we sailed right in waving the Senior National Park card and parked at the closed Visitors center. Not many visitors. Took a leisurely 1.75 mile walk around Manzanita Lake. Very peaceful. Bigly trees, lots of green, many birds, superb views of snow covered Lassen Peak and a shimming lake. Encouraged by our success, we then set off on the 4-mile trail (r/t) to Crag’s Lake. This required more effort. A gradual incline became a steeper switchback laced trail halfway up which in total rose about 1300 ft. up to 7500 ft. elevation. Lots of more bigly trees and good views many of which still had large snow accumulations. While steep in some places, the trail was well maintained and easy to traverse. The alpine lake at the end of trail was at the base of landslides that were labeled as Chaos Jumbles. They were formed from erosion of the Chaos Crags which are lava plugs pushed up more than 1000 years ago. Within the Jumbles were small coniferous trees that constitute the Dwarf Forest. Almost two hours up and an hour down, so it was too late to see the Lava Beds Monument that day.

New plan, rather than stop over for the night in Klamath Falls after the Lava Beds, we looked for lodging in northeastern CA. Very little there. Aside from the mountains, the countryside is primarily employed as hay and cattle farms. Way more cattle than people up there We travelled through some very small, no stop light towns without any success, or restaurants, so we decided to go a small bit out of the way to The Rim Rock Motel in Alturas in Modoc county, population about 5,000. That town is a small regional center. It had a high school and a locally owned non-profit movie theater (no showings that night).

We drove the short distance into town for dinner at an Italian restaurant. No problem parking. Our waitress actually moved into the town, albeit 30 years ago with her daughters (no mention of the husband/father) and she said, like many others in the town, she worked multiple jobs. She spoke highly of the town, but conceded that the vacant storefronts were a problem and indicative of decline. Based on her recommendation we had the spaghetti specials and some extra meatballs. Nice craft beer.

The friendly clerk at the motel provided an extension cord to plug in from an outlet in the utility closet to charge up the car, but alas it did not work. The charging unit did not work even when I plugged it into an outlet in our room, so I feared that my charging unit was broken and despaired of replacing it on the trip.  Comey testifies tomorrow, so there will be a late start.