Week 16: A Volcano in the Snow

Lassen Volcanic, Who?

Before this crazy idea of living in a van got off the ground, neither of us had ever even heard of Lassen Volcanic National Park. It gets overshadowed by some of the other beautiful parks in the area. We didn’t include this stop in our journey with a lot of intention, instead, we saw it on the map near some other stops we had in mind and decided why not. After looking into the park a bit more, we became more and more excited about our visit. The park has some unique features and incredible views.

Our week started with a day of exploration in Lassen Volcanic National Park. It became apparent that we came to the park just before the ideal time to visit. The park varies in elevation quite a bit, leading to inconsistent weather depending on your location. We were expecting warm temperatures, so were surprised to find out that the highway that goes through the park was partially closed due to snow. The highway basically runs north to south and splits the park in half. Nearly all of the sites are along this highway. Because we were staying toward the north end of the park, we decided we would start by exploring that portion of the park first with hopes that the highway might open up later in the week for us to get to the south end of the park.

We took the opportunity to sleep in since we knew there was not enough in the north end of the park to keep us busy for an entire day. We then headed toward an area called The Devastated Area. We went on a short interpretive trail through this area and found out that its name comes from the fact that a volcanic eruption over 100 years ago occurred and caused mud and debris to wipe through the area and demolish about everything in its path, including all of the trees. We are far enough removed from the eruption that trees have repopulated the area, but it was interesting to learn about the history of the area.

Next we stopped at a number of lookouts along the highway, most of which were either scenic views of the forest or volcanic rocks.

Along the way we also did a couple of trails. One being the Manzanita Lake Loop, which takes you around a large lake and offers incredible views of the beautiful lake with some of the large mountains in the background. The second trail we did, again took us to a lake. But this time it was a lake up in the mountains, so we hiked 4 miles uphill to the lake. The hike was not especially impressive, but the lake was neat! We called it a day and headed to our campsite for dinner and a movie.

Tube of Lava

Tuesday evening we went to a lava tube, called Subway Cave. This destination was recommended to us by the mechanic that we talked to in Redding, California. It sounded interesting, so we checked it out. It is a fairly small cave that was created by lava flow – the outside of the flow hardened and insulated the inner flow, allowing it to stay hot and continue flowing. The result is what feels like a perfectly carved opening in the rock. The cave was dark and cold, with flashlights being a necessity to find your way.

Finding the Sun and the Stars

The campsite that we stayed at for the majority of the week was really nice, however, it had a lot of tall tree coverage. In most cases that would be a welcome shelter from the heat of the sun. In our case though, we prefer an open sky where we can easily get access to the Starlink satellites that provide us with our much needed internet and the sun that provides us with solar energy. With all of the trees, our internet was spotty and inconsistent and our solar could not keep up with our demands. Thankfully for us, there was a nice vista point nearby. “Vista point” was a generous term for the location though, since there wasn’t much in terms of scenery. It was really more of a rest area. The large parking lot was relatively empty all day, so we ended up spending a lot of time there where we had a clear view of the sky for solar and internet. We spent some of our working hours there and did a number of video calls as well.

Wednesday was one of the days where we spent a large portion of our day at the vista point. We did our work there and stayed into the evening to ensure we had good internet for the Crew game. We made dinner and then headed back to our campsite. When we arrived, we were surprised to find a couple of young men at our site setting up their tents. We pulled in as they looked at us with puzzled faces. They informed us that they paid for the site and politely asked that we find another spot. I responded telling them we had been there for a couple of days and had paid for most of the week. I also showed them the tag that we attached to the site’s number that shows the details of our reservation. After some discussion, they were clearly annoyed but, decided they would pack up their stuff and find another spot. I felt terrible doing this… especially when they had a number of things already set up. But we specifically paid for that site and hated to go to another site where authorities could ask us to leave knowing that we hadn’t paid for that site. I told them they were welcome to stay, but it would have been pretty tight quarters, so they weren’t interested. I was thankful that they were polite despite their clear and understandable frustration.

We spent nearly all of the work day on Thursday at the vista point since we were running low on energy and Kendra had a meeting in the morning. In the evening we drove to the park again, exploring the museum that gave the history of the park along with information about a photographer who was there to capture some of the volcanic eruptions that occurred a hundred-some years ago. We also did a couple of short hikes around another lake and the Lily Pond.

Resourceful or Cheap? You Decide.

Thursday evening, we were both feeling ready for a shower, but we didn’t have much water, so we made our way to the park’s dump and fill station. In our experience these amenities are typically free of charge in the national parks. But in this particular case, it cost $8 to use the facilities. In order to make the absolute most of those precious $8, we decided we would shower at the station. First, Kendra showered while I dumped our waste water, then I showered while Kendra filled our fresh water tank. Doing this allowed us to use as much water as we would like and still leave the place with a full tank. A bit silly, I know… but van life requires some out-of-the-box thinking at times to make the most of our resources.

Our First Meal Over the Fire

The following evening, we left our national forest campsite, for a campsite within the national park. I managed to persuade Kendra to cook our dinner over the fire for the first time during this adventure. She doesn’t particularly enjoy the work it takes to have a fire or the additional effort it takes to rid ourselves of the smokey smell. But I insisted that I would get the fire going and do the cooking. We even had free firewood that the previous tenants had left behind. I worked hard to chop the logs into more usable firewood. We made a very tasty Taco Turkey Sweet Potato Skillet dish.

Our Final Day in Lassen Volcanic National Park

Saturday was our final day to explore Lassen Volcanic National Park and we discovered that the highway had fully opened the day before. We would be able to see the whole park after all! We headed down the highway toward the other end of the park and made it a few minutes before Kendra had the foresight to ask how much gas we had. We didn’t have enough to make it to the other end and back, so we turned around and headed to the gas station near the campground. We arrived to find that it was blocked off and closed due to construction. We then headed to the park store to ask where we might find fuel. He informed us that we would have to leave the park and travel nearly 20 miles in the opposite direction to the nearest gas station. We headed that way, filled up, and returned to the park. During this time, we used the cellular service we were able to get on the road to do some research. We discovered that the two most popular trails in the park were still inaccessible due to snow coverage. After some time we were back on track and ready to explore what we could, albeit an hour or so behind schedule and with fewer interesting sites to see.

We started the exploration with a 2.8 mile trek to Kings Creek Fall. The hike was fairly steep and strenuous, but was scenic along the way and ended at a pretty waterfall.

We stopped at several more viewpoints along the way. We found it very strange to be walking through the snow when the temperatures were upwards of mid 80s that day. Apparently the park gets a massive amount of snow that just takes a very long time to melt. It was a pleasant way to see the beauty that the snow brings!

Our final stop for the day was called Sulfur Works, which turned out to be the most interesting part of the park that we got to see. It is a hydrothermal area with unique color, smells, and a boiling mud pot. We did a hike up the mountain next to Sulfur Works and hiked until we came to a portion of the trail that was completely covered in deep snow and then decided to turn around.

By the time it was all said and done, we hadn’t done all that much hiking, but found ourselves lacking in the energy department. The hikes we did were steep, quite hot, and at a high elevation. That combination will wear you out. We headed back to our campsite for a relaxing evening.

We found Lassen Volcanic to be very pretty, but did feel sad to miss some of the highlights of the park. It certainly doesn’t have the wow factor of some of the other parks, but it was unique to see some of the effects of a recently active volcano.

Next stop, those great big red trees in Northern California.

Thanks for reading these words that I type. I appreciate y’all.