Lassen National Park

On August 14, 2010 we headed over to pick up our kids' nana (who is also my mom--you may have noticed that she's showing up in a lot of our adventures) and made the drive out to the place whose name is shown on the following picture:

The more astute blog follower will notice that our family is missing one member. No, we did not leave Lennon at home, but he chose to sit this picture out. He wasn't exactly his usual pleasant self on this particular morning (more to follow on this topic). My mom was, of course, her usual pleasant self. Here she is doing her famous Vanna White impression:

I'd like to buy a vowel

It's traditional for us to start out any trip to a national park (or any place that has one) at the visitors center. This trip was no exception. While we were deciding what magnets to buy and so forth, they announced that they were about to start a movie about Lassen. We decided to check it out.

 Meghan looks both cool and happy here. The coolness continued, but after watching enactments of volcanic eruptions and subsequent destruction, Meghan was quite concerned. She was worried that the volcano was going to erupt during our visit. In fact, throughout the day she asked us four or five times when what we saw in the movie was going to happen. I told her that it wouldn't happen for a long long time. She has difficulty with the concept of time, or else my answer wasn't specific enough for her, so she rephrased her question,"It's not going to happen on this day, right?" ("This day" is how she says "today.")

Another of our children, who will remain nameless (but whose picture will follow), still hadn't warmed up to the day's adventure

The rest of us sat in the front row during the movie, which was a row before the closest row in the picture.

After the movie, we hit the road to begin the tour. Our first stop took us to a place called "Sulphur Works." This bubbling mud pit was pretty cool to look at, but this stop wasn't the most pleasant on the nostrils.

We were excited to visit "Bumpass Hell" (I mean names don't get any better than that), but the trail was closed due to snow. We had a snowball fight instead.

A little further up the road we stopped to take this picture of a frozen Lake Helen with Lassen Peak in the background. While Rachel and I were out of the car taking this picture some kind of bug flew down the front of Rachel's shirt. I took a picture of her extricating the bug from her cleavage, but I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate it if I posted it. (I'll just tell everyone about it.)

Bug safely removed, we drove to the Lassen Peak parking area. Due both to snow and trail work, the trail to the summit was closed about a mile and a half in. We decided we'd see how far we could get. We didn't have to go too far to enjoy some fantastic scenery. This next shot was taken only about a hundred feet from the trail head.

I love nature.

Here are a few more shots of the view not too far from the beginning of the trail:

Here's a closer look at that interesting circle in the rock from the picture above

It may have been a little cold, but as you can see, he-who-was-previously-not-named is beginning to warm up. His youngest sister, on the other hand, is apparently thinking about the damage that molten lava can wreak. Actually, I think she's just squinting because it was so bright.

We probably only walked for about fifteen minutes before we decided it was time to retreat. Meghan's happy again and sliding all over the place.

As you can see from the previous two, and even more so from the following photo, we weren't entirely prepared for snow hiking.

Actually, Rachel had hiking boots in the car, she's just tough like that.

After our mountaineering expedition came to an untimely end, we went to Summit Lake for lunch. Before we left Sacramento, we stopped and picked up Subway sandwiches for lunch. That was a good call, and made for a delicious lunch.

After lunch we decided to check out the lake.

Our girls love the water. When they see it, they need to get into it.

Another pair of adventurers apparently felt the same as the girls because they were swimming further down the lake, and as far as we could tell, they had not packed bathing suits if you know what I mean. Needless to say, we were strategic in deciding where to allow the girls to do some wading. This was the second trip this summer in which we played in both the snow and the water.

The next stop on the map was to a place called "Devastated Area." We stopped at a pull out on the way there to shoot this cool view of Lassen Peak.

The "Devastated Area" is a short interpretive hike that includes, according to the visitor guide they gave us at the park entrance, "rocks as large as dump trucks that were were carried down from the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak" (6). Rocks as large as dump trucks, less than 100 years ago, maybe Meghan wasn't so paranoid after all. (Note the appropriate MLA parenthetical citation. You will find the full citation in the Works Cited page at the end of this blog. Here are a couple pictures of some of the big rocks that the volcano launched in 1915, although you will probably notice, neither are as big as dump trucks. I guess I didn't take enough pictures.

And for reference, and because it's a pretty snazzy picture, we were this far away from Lassen Peak: It shot those rocks pretty far!

Cannonball boulders weren't the only things we saw. Throughout the hike (or, more accurately, walk), we kept hearing this humming sound that would stop whenever we got close to it. I had to figure out what was making that noise so I began to investigate. Eventually my predatory instincts and stalking ability paid off and I was able to get within photographing distance of one of the noise makers:

I believe it's a cicada.

Our next stop was Manzanita Lake, but on the way I saw what I had been hoping for. Like usual, I had brought my climbing shoes just in case any boulders happened to show up, and while this wasn't the most challenging boulder, it would give me a chance to use my shoes,so we stopped.  Here's a picture of the sign that introduced us to the boulder:

Here's the actual boulder and my kids who also like to climb rocks:

Like I mentioned, this wasn't the most challenging boulder to climb, so I actually kind of had to work to make it challenging, but my kids couldn't quite grasp that concept. For the first few minutes they kept telling me, "Dad, there's an easier way up, let me show you." I explained the concept of how when something is more difficult, it is more rewarding. I don't think they bought it, but I tried.

The girls did at least try other routes to get to the top. Notice Meghan's climbing shoes.

We were successful.

We were also successful in descending, which almost wasn't the case last time I went bouldering in Yosemite.

Our last stop was Manzanita Lake, which, you may be interested toknow, was "formed when rock avalanche debris from Chaos Crags partially dammed Manzanita Creek" (Visitor Guide 6). 

We decided these fallen tree trunks needed to be explored.

Here I am leading my expedition:

We're following the leader, the leader, the leader

One of the highlights of the trip was seeing this thing swimming in the lake about 40 feet away from us. We couldn't tell for sure what it was. We weren't sure if it was a beaver, a muskrat, or an otter.

Nor could we get very good pictures of it. (You should click on these to see them better. They're cropped to make them as large as possible, while still being as clear as possible.)

It kept going under the popping back up somewhere else. We moved to a log leaning out into the water to try and get a better shot, and the thing swam right under us and disappeared. It was moving fast, but I was able to get this shot of it.

It's carrying some weeds in its mouth. Our best guess is that it's an otter.

I said our last stop was Manzanita Lake, but that's not entirely true. After Manzanita Lake we turned around and headed back out the way we came, but we stopped back at the visitor's center and decided to try a hike from the campground there to a waterfall (of which I can't remember the name).

Rachel was very excited to be hiking and having her picture taken

Lennon was our fearless leader for this one

It was getting late, we were a little tired, and the waterfall ended up being a little too far away, so we turned around after walking about a half hour. But the hike was very pretty even if we didn't make it all the way.

Works Cited

I was just kidding. But good job checking, and I'll let you borrow the guide if you really want to. Although, after reading my post, you should have plenty of information already.