Day 6: Thursday, 6 May 2021: Eureka to Lassen Volcanic to Carson City, NV
We took the CA-299 and CA-44 route east from Eureka on Thursday morning. That first stretch before Redding was THE windiest, up and down, roller-coaster-y road we have ever been on, and Sam felt it especially! We had to make a pit stop for a wardrobe change and carseat mop-up (thank heavens for wipes in the glove box!). We also made another stop at a park to stretch our legs (I don't even remember where we were) that just so happened to be a disc golf course. Again. We really should have brought some discs on this trip!
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| Still smiling, through it all! |
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| A quick stroll through the disc golf course in . . . I'll have to ask Gregg because I just don't know! |
By lunchtime we were pulling into the Manzanita Lake picnic area just inside the Northwest entrance to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Oh, my! What a place to picnic. As soon as we got out of the car, Callie said, "this is just like Tony Grove!" And it really was very similar. Similar landscape, similar lake, similar smell (oh those douglas fir needles + sunshine + dirt!! How I love that smell!). We finished up lunch and headed out toward the visitor's center (closed) to begin our loop around both Reflection and Manzanita Lakes. It was probably a couple of miles total to close the loop, but it was delightful! Warm, but breezy, gorgeous views, interesting plants and great company! Who could ask for anything more?
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| Pro picnic status! |
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| Our first peek at Lassen Peak. |
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| The first of two lily ponds (minus any lily pads). |
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| Lovely lichens. |
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| Left the giant trees but now seeing giant cones. Funny how they don't go together. :) |
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| There's some lily pads in the second pond. |
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| Sam gettin' crafty with the sticks on the walk. |
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| First views of Reflection Lake. |
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| Now these were super weird little things. They came out of the ground this color and they were hard, sort of like a pine cone! |
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| When they got a little bigger, they looked sort of velvety? But still bright red. |
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| Seriously the weirdest plant (?) I had ever seen! I of course checked in with my resident plant expert and she sent me to this site that explained all about the Snow Plant. Thanks, Heath! Fun to learn something new! |
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| Another biggun! |
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| A better view of Lassen Peak. |
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| We are a happy family. :) |
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| Ah! That's why they call it Reflection Lake! |
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| Back at the visitor center area was this cute little building built by a Mr. Loomis when he lived here to house his seismographic equipment to help him know when another eruption was likely to occur. |
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| Loomis lived near the volcano and took photographs of it during its many eruptions between 1914 and 1921. |
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| A little rest stop in the shade on the far end of Manzanita Lake. |
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| He said he wanted to take a nap. :) |
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| Spoiler alert: he didn't nap. But he did lay like this for a while. Haha. |
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| Lassen Peak is the most famous (obviously) but there are a bunch of other volcanoes in this park, which we'll have to come back to see someday when the entire road is open (when we were there it was still closed because of so much snow up at the top). |
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| Stellar's Jay! |
We took a quick drive around the open loop of the campground near Manzanita Lake and saw that they have camping cabins (very bare necessities type places) you can rent in the summer. Looks so fun!
We then drove up the main road for about 8 miles to Devastated Area (so named because during one of the big eruption events it was completely destroyed by lava and rockslides) where the road ends in a gate that is only open in the summer months. We wandered around the little nature trail there to see lots of volcanic rock, old and "new".
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| So many big, beautiful ponderosa pine cones littered along this path. |
I really learned a ton at this park and can't wait to come back and see more - like the geothermal hot spring areas and hike to the cinder cone and drive near the top of Lassen Peak! I had no idea that this place even existed until we were looking at routes for this trip and realized there was another national park we could hit along the way. And it's an old one, created in 1916, while the volcano was still active! So cool!
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| We listened to this one all in one day of driving, finishing it somewhere between Lassen and Susanville (where we snagged McDonald's burgers for dinner as we continued our drive to Carson City for the night). |
