Day 57: Lassen Volcanic National Park

After a very restful night, we get up around 8am and have breakfast with some of the fresh loaf of bread made yesterday evening. We take advantage of the campground internet, before cleaning, packing and leaving before noon.

We start driving up to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The dominant feature of the park is Lassen Peak, southernmost volcano in the Cascade Range. Between 1914 and 1921, creating a new crater, and releasing lave and a great deal of ash. The area surrounding Lassen Peak is still active, as we will discover later.

After stopping at the visitor center, we start discovering this national park. We explore Devastated Area, which features – as described by its name – an area devastated after the eruption. It is there that Yellow is using for the first time the new camera, taking Mt. Lassen in picture.

 

We eat lunch at Summit Lake and drive toward the summit. The elevation of the road is once again higher than 8,000 ft. Poor Bertha. Right after starting to go down, we park at Bumpass Hell’s trailhead parking lot. Bumpass Hell is the largest hydrothermal area in the park, and was named after an early settler who severly burned a leg after falling into a boiling pool.

 

The trail is the most popular of the park, and it is pretty flat until the 100 ft drop into the thermally active basin. The area can be seen – and especially smelled! – from far away. It is a wide basin filled with various steaming pools and unusual multi-colored soils, stained orange, brown, yellow and green by sulphur and other minerals. Interesting fact: the steam temperature of Big Boiler, the largest fumarole in the park, has been measured as high as 322°F (161°C), making it one of the hottest fumaroles in the world. World’s best, once again!

 

Back in the RV after the 3 mile hike, we drive down and stop shortly at Sulphur Works, an easily accessed hydrothermal area features boiling mudpots and steam vents. We leave Lassen Volcanic NP at the end of the afternoon, and drive down to Almanor Lake.

 

We arrive at our destination for the night, Almanor campground, an hour later. The campground is beautiful, freshly paved with full hook-up sites. Unfortunately, we were looking for some cheaper sites indicated by the website. We check online to see if there are other campgrounds in the area, but we don’t find any. We finally decide to stay at this campground. Yellow decide to go pay for the campground with his bike, so he can browse around to the lake, which he does after slipping the envelop with the money in the payment box. And what does he discover? That's right close to the campground where we are now installed, which is Almanor Legacy campground, is the cheaper, less fancy Almanor campground. Too late.

Red studies for a good part of the evening, while Yellow cooks some yellow split pea soup, which takes forever as the pressure cooker is almost full. We finally have dinner at 8pm. After cleaning and sorting pictures, we watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory and go to bed.