US-50 West 2022:
Day 7 - Lassen Volcanic National Park
Day 7 - Lassen Volcanic National Park
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Friday, October 7, 2022: We awoke to sunlight through our tent's skylight. Our thermometer indicated that it had gotten down to 49°F overnight. Brrr. |
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We were in no hurry to leave this morning, so we had Pop-Tarts for breakfast in our tent and then lazed about until 8:30 or so. |
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By 8:45 AM, almost everything was out of the tent and staged on the nearby picnic table. |
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Ten minutes later, everything was off the hilltop, ... |
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... and neatly packed away in the van. |
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We left the campground and headed down to see Folsom Lake, ... |
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... and managed to get a photo of this Escape campervan that was parked by the lakeside. |
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By 9:30 AM, we were out of Folsom and crossing into Roseville, where we got a cool California-specific Click It or Ticket sign, ... |
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... heading north ... |
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... on California Highway 65, which is part of the Purple Heart Trail. |
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The State Theatre building in Marysville, California, had seen better days, but the tragedy and comedy masks were still visible at the top of the building. |
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As we got farther north, we started seeing huge orchards. |
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Debbie was really trying to get a good picture of the tall skinny evergreens in the left side of this photo. These lined the entrance to this orchard. |
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The orchards eventually gave way to grasslands, ... |
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... and then a Del Taco appeared when we got to Chico, CA. We ordered tasty burritos and donut bites, ... |
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... and admired this really long row of Tesla charging stations at the nearby Target. There were something like 20 charging stations here, which is the most we have ever seen in one location. |
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After lunch, we drove a few blocks ... |
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... to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. |
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There were almost no cars in the parking lot near the door, and we soon found out that was because the taproom was unexpectedly closed. |
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That was okay for us, because we were here for the gift shop. There are bike racks outside the taproom made from beer kegs. Cool! |
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The Brewhouse Bar in the giftshop was open, although we declined to sample anything. We still had lots of driving to do today. |
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We looked through the items in the gift shop, ... |
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... and settled on several sample glasses, a pint glass, and a Sierra Nevada-branded Chico bag. We had been here with friends in 2016 when they told us that they are called Chico bags because they were invented here. |
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From Chico, we headed north into the hills and wooded countryside, ... |
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... into Lassen National Forest, ... |
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... where people apparently stand hip-deep in the rivers to do their fishing. |
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We were driving the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway, which has to be the most impressive name for a road. |
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It was a very peaceful drive, with tall evergreen trees lining the road, ... |
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... until we got closer to the park and started to see large tracts of fire-damaged forest. |
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There were acres and acres of charred and scorched trees, ... |
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... and piles of logged tree trunks as areas had been cleaned up. |
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We arrived at Lassen Volcanic National Park just after 1:30 PM, ... |
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... and headed straight to Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center. |
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There was a display board that had information about last year's Dixie Fire that had devastated so much of the park. By the time that it was contained, it had burned almost 70 percent of the park. We had planned to visit here the year before, but had to replan our route due to the fire. |
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Ooh. We love these maps. We were currently in the bottom left corner, and we were going to drive the road marked in red through the park and exit near the top left. |
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These holographic post cards and bookmarks draw us in every time we see them. It's amusing to see people, us included, looking at them with their heads bobbing left and right to see what the movement effects are on the card. We brought a couple home for our grandkids. |
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Check out this camper that was in the parking lot. It had a name on the door identifying it as Vixen 21. It was designed by the Vixen Motor Company in the 1980s and was produced from 1986 until 1989. |
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It is really long and low to the ground, and looked very sleek. This appears to be a TD model, with a pop-up roof that hinges from the passenger side. |
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We started our drive through the park, and noticed that the road wound right up the side of Diamond Peak. |
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Here's the view from that road, looking back toward the visitor center. |
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The landscape was very rugged, ... |
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... with areas that had obvious fire damage right next to areas that were untouched by the fire. |
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Emerald Lake was very appropriately named, with a very deep green reflecting off the clear water. |
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As we drove past Lake Helen, we could see Eagle Peak (left) and Lassen Peak to the north ... |
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... and Brokeoff Mountain (left) and Mt. Diller (right) behind us to the west. |
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The views were spectacular, ... |
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... and even the burned areas were showing signs of life and new growth. |
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We stopped near point of interest number 13 on the map, ... |
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... which was a lovely clearing with a plaque ... |
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... marking the Noble Pass, one of the routes used by the early pioneers who traveled west in the 1850s. |
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At the western entrance to the park, we stopped at the Loomis Museum. Can you guess why? |
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There's a Mather plaque mounted on the wall. It is one of the original 1930 castings, and looked to be in really good shape. |
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In front of the museum was a small building with a sign over the door that identified it as a seismograph. |
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We peeked into the windows and could see the equipment that still remained here: a large drum mounted on a concrete block, with two four-foot vanes extending toward the drum from their mounting point on cylinders suspended from the ceiling. There are still seismographs located around Lassen Peak to monitor it for activity since it is considered one of the 18 volcanos in the US assessed as a very high threat for eruption. |
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As we drove out of the park through the western entrance, ... |
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... we could see Mt. Shasta, barely visible to the north. |
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We descended toward the northern end of the Sacramento Valley, ... |
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... and were amused by the salmon sculptures above the concrete median barrier. They appeared to be swimming upstream toward the mountains. That's really cool. |
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In Redding, we saw this Heavenly Donuts building that clearly used to be a Winchell's Donuts. That triangular sign is very distinctive. |
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There were lots of establishments with vintage signs, like the Americana Modern Hotel, ... |
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... and the Stardust Motel. |
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We took a slight detour onto Foothill Boulevard in Redding, to the Pilgrim Congregational Church. It was designed in 1958 by Frank Lloyd Wright and his architects at Taliesin West and built by local church members. |
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The church is built into the hillside, with the roof level with the parking lot, and the entrance at a lower level. |
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We left the valley and headed back into the Klamath Mountains, to the Whiskeytown National Resource Area. |
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There are gorgeous views of Whiskeytown Lake, ... |
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... which has one of those funnel spillway things that we've always wanted to see close up. |
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The lake was glassy calm, with a small handful of boaters visible, mostly in kayaks. |
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We drove to the Brandy Creek Beach picnic area, ... |
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... to see the Mather plaque. |
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In 2014, a new mold was created from the Berkeley plaque by the Superintendent of Whiskeytown NRA, and five plaques were cast in 2015. This plaque was dedicated later that year on the 50th anniversary of Whiskeytown's creation. |
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There were manzanita and betelnut acorns all over the area, including these two placed on the Mather plaque by appreciative squirrels, we assume. |
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A small stream runs along the picnic grounds. It was a really beautiful place. |
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We left the same way we drove in and got a picture of this sculpture dedicated to President John F. Kennedy, who visited the area to dedicate the Whiskeytown Dam in September 1963, just two months before he was assassinated. |
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We drove around Whiskeytown Lake to the Oak Bottom Marina area, which was going to be our campground for the night. |
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After driving around the campground loop twice to find our reserved spot, we realized that we would need to park quite a distance from our site and walk down a fairly steep path for fifty yards to get to our site. We noticed that there were wheelbarrows provided to help you get your gear to your site, which wasn't encouraging. |
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After getting down to the site, which was a premium campsite that cost extra due to being right on the water, ... |
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... we noticed that there was an extremely loud buzzing noise coming from the tree at the center of our site. There was a large bag hanging from a branch over the bear locker that was absolutely teeming with flies. The bag itself was bulging with them. Creeped out by both the flies and the overall conditions, we decided that we were not going to be staying here. We climbed back up the slope with the gear that we had brought down, and decided to try one of the first come, first served campgrounds down the road that Debbie remembered from when she was searching for a place to stay. Anything was better than this. |
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As we left the site, we saw a wild turkey, ... |
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... and this bright blue bird, which may be a California scrub jay. It looks like a Stellar's jay, but doesn't have the distinctive crest on the top of its head like a Stellar's jay. |
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A jackrabbit ran across the path, and we stopped, trying to get a picture of it. It went into hiding, but you can just see its eye barely visible on the left of the bush in this photo. |
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We headed west into the mountains, driving for a little more than 30 minutes before ... |
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... turning in at the entrance to Steel Bridge Campground. |
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The road runs through a narrow residential area and passes a steel bridge, of course, ... |
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... right along Trinity River, ... |
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... until you get to the Steel Bridge Campground, which is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). There are only thirteen sites, and you have to drive the two miles very slowly down the narrow road along the river before you can find out that there are no sites available. |
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We slowly backtracked to leave the campground, ... |
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... but we were able to get a better picture of this goat crossing sign on our way out. |
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We kept heading west, stopping outside of Douglas City at the Moon Lim Lee Rest Area. There was a stone fountain that has been here since the 1930s, originally to provide water for car radiators and drinking water for travellers. We filled up a few of our water bottles from the spring-fed fountain before we drove further west. |
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Around 6:15 PM, we had reached Weaverville, ... |
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... which was a large enough town to have a Burger King. We stopped there for dinner and felt much better about our decision to press on toward the unknown once our bellies were full. |
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Weaverville also had a ranger station for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, which spans more than two million acres. Our search for a campground was taking us right along its southern border. |
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The sun was starting to set when we got to our second possible campground, ... |
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... the Junction City Campground. |
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We were delighted to find that the campground was nearly deserted, with only about three or four of the twenty available spots already claimed. We paid the $10 fee and filled out the campsite fee form, ... |
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... and got right to setting up camp. |
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Within twenty minutes, we had our tent up, all of our stuff inside, and any stray bugs eradicated. We were done just in time to see the sun setting over the western mountains. |
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We had done it. We took a chance and abandoned a crappy campsite and found a much better one down the road, and celebrated by setting up our chairs and having a relaxing evening in the comfort of our awesome tent. |
Copyright © Deborah Schilling/Thomas Bundy