Lassen Volcanic and Crater Lake National Parks

 

Hello from California and Lassen Volcanic Park.  Crazy to think just last month we were in Florida! We were disappointed that our stay at Manzanita  Lake campground in the park was cancelled on us (they had tree clean up to do) as it would have been amazing to stay right there in the park next to the lake.

We did find another campground just outside of the park at Hat Creek RV resort, which was nice but for future Lassen visitors, try to stay at Manzanita!

Dave was back to his old tricks of measuring how many board feet he could get out of a tree. There are some really big trees here, even the pine cones are huge!

Lots of trees but not as many wildflowers out here. It was a little colder so maybe they are coming still. We did find this one bush that was blooming and some cool moss from the trees on the ground. The views around the lake were just spectacular!

I'm not sure how much cardio we got from our hike because we were constantly stopping to take pictures! It was hard not to, it was just so pretty.

After the hike, we ventured up the scenic drive as far as we could go. Hard to believe there is still so much snow here.

From Lassen, north we went to Oregon and our Crater Lake stop. Our campground was only supposed to be about 25 minutes from the park but the north entrance was closed. We had an eventful stay at Diamond Lake RV park though, we saw a bear! 

It also was eventful (not in as good of a way) in that we had to take Noodle to the Emergency Hospital in Bend (which was almost 2 hours away!). He jumped through the door window again and got himself filthy in the dirt. I shampooed him clean but something either in the dirt or shampoo did not sit well with him and he couldn't stop vomiting. Poor buddy! With our wallet quite a bit lighter, they gave him some meds and he is doing better now (thank you Lord!).

The roads between Lassen and Crater were just beautiful! We had good weather and bright blue skies but...we must have hit a hatching of something... Phoebe was covered! Given we had to stick around camp to make sure Noodle was ok, we had plenty of time to hand wash all those bugs off (yuck).

With the north entrance (closest to the campground) closed we had to drive about an hour and 20 minutes to the west entrance. It was another scenic drive and boy, if we thought Lassen still had snow it was nothing compared to when we got to Crater Lake!

Going to the visitor's center was a hoot! There was so much snow still, it was taller than Dave!

We hiked around part of the rim (the whole way is 30 miles and darn, we forgot our snow shoes!). The views were amazing; not only of the snow, but the bluest water you've ever seen! Crater Lake is the most pristine and deepest lake in the country at 1943 feet deep. Formed when the volcano inside Mount Mazama erupted, the center collapsed in and snow and rain have filled it over the years. Not one stream runs into or out of the lake, which is also why it is one of the purest in the country. The campground there isn't opened yet but they do have a lovely lodge. I can only imagine how busy this place must be in the summer with all those visitors!

Speaking of visitors, mom and dad were here too in 2004. Not as much snow in September but still enough to throw a snowball. Right back at ya, mom!😄

The views were amazing! At 55 degrees it was cold but the sun was bright and that made it seem a little warmer. You could tell the winter must be brutal from the tree "skeletons" that remain.

It really is a magical place. In the summer you can take a boat ride to Wizard Island (seen to the right) and do some hiking there too. This one might have to go on the "need to come back to list".😎

Another scenic drive takes us north further to Washington state and our Harvest Host for the evening. This farm had a special resident who really liked our motorhome.😏 "Kevin" kept going around & around us "honking" at us. I spared you the honking but check him out. Until next time, thanks for following and for your prayers along the way.

Sand Springs, Glenwood Springs, Great Basin National Park, Silos, Buffalos and Alpacas!

 

On our journey west we stopped in Sand Springs, Oklahoma to see Michelle & Joe. It was so nice of Michelle's friends to wait until I was there so we all could celebrate the wedding with a lovely brunch. While we were enjoying mimosas and egg casserole, the boys were working hard on the "church" kitchen.  

Yes, you read correctly, Joe lived in a church built in 1917 and Michelle loved him enough to move into it with him. It is an ongoing project he has been working on for years but now that Michelle is there the kitchen work went to the top of the list. We were more than happy to help since that meant several wonderful meals including a standing rib roast while we were there. A second top priority was Michelle's bathroom which she & I painted and put up new fixtures.  It was a fast 4 days and we hated to go, but on to the next stop to be greeted by the "silo" dogs in Kansas.

The "silo" being an underground missile silo that is being turned into a Air B&B and resort. We visited as Harvest Host guests and took the tour. Check out the website at  www.atlasadastra.com to see the big plans the owner now has for the place.

From a silo in Kansas to a Buffalo ranch in Colorado, our Harvest Host adventure continues! While we didn't get to see him being born we did get to play with 13 day old "Bruce" who was a twin. His mama couldn't handle feeding both of them so Shawn, the ranch owner got to bottle feed him. Good thing he didn't need to sit on Shawn's lap!😄

We were spoiled by getting to park in their family's full hook up site and the sunset wasn't bad either!

Continuing west we got to see snow in Denver but enjoyed the beautiful Colorado scenery for the rest of the drive to Glenwood Springs.

What's in Glenwood Springs? It's where Doc Holliday died and was buried of course! Yes, we hiked up to the cemetery to see his grave and got some nice bonus views of town.

The reason that Doc Holliday went to Glenwood Springs was because he was hoping to be healed by the hot springs and the vapor caves there. It didn't help Doc's tuberculosis but we sure enjoyed our time soaking in the mineral bath and relaxing in the 120 degree vapor cave.

Well, we made it just over a month without any "incidents" or problems...but it wouldn't be a RV adventure without a few fixes along the way. Here we have been worrying about the roads in Alaska but apparently the roads in the lower states can reek their havoc too. While at our next stop in Salina, Utah we decided to wash Phoebe since it had been a while and she was getting a lot of road dirt. It was a good thing because we noticed the outside door to the hot water heater was pulling away from the wall. Dave to the rescue! The supports holding the hot water heater up had basically disintegrated (see pieces to the right of Dave's head) but Dave was able to rebuild them with some extra 2 x 4's we had left over from another job (thanks to Bruce & Jan's new laundry set up in their RV!).

From Salina we continued west on US 50, aptly named "the loneliest highway in America".  We drove for hours maybe seeing 4 or 5 cars the entire time.  Not many people come this way but back in 2003 my Mom and Dad took the same route, heading to Great Basin National Park. See their picture below.

This was quite the leg of the trip feeling like you are in the middle of nowhere. It was almost like being in a time warp being on that road, only to finally make it to our campground and it feeling desolate too. We were the only RV there (that wasn't "permanent") and look what was at the office...a pay phone and a yellow pages hanging there too! When was the last time you saw one of those?😄

As typical we headed for the visitor's center first off to get the lowdown on what to do. It was a good thing we booked our cave tour so far in advance because all the tours were sold out when we got there. With being one of the least visited parks and still "pre-season", they don't have many staff so they only offer 1 or 2 tours a day.

The downside of booking so far in advance is that you don't know what the weather will be like. We booked our tour for Sunday which meant hiking on Saturday, in the rain. It wasn't so bad until we got about another 300 ft up in elevation where it turned to sleet. We still got to see lots of pretty spring flowers and even a mama and a fawn.

 

It was cold but still a nice couple miles of hiking in a pretty spot. If it hadn't of been for a boy & girl scout troop on the hike I bet we didn't see more than 5 other people!

Speaking of people, we had an encounter that was a first for us. As if the desolate campground wasn't creepy enough, we had a man come and knock on the door and ask for money for "food". We were eating dinner so I invited him in to eat with us (yes, Dave gave me the hairy eyeball!😳). Antony turned out to be quite the character! He regaled us with stories ranging from being a huckleberry picker and feeding them to grizzly bears to being Willie Nelson's tour bus test driver. It seemed he had been everywhere and had the stories to prove it. He had the unfortunate luck of having his truck break down on the loneliest highway in America but hopefully he'll be back on the road again soon.

Sunday we did the cave tour and it was strikingly different from the rest of our time at Great Basin because there were 15 other people on the tour with us! 😄 The cave had a small pond in it which was cool with the lighting they had in place.

The tour we took was called "parachute shield", which are the formations (speleothems, technically. See, I was paying attention to the ranger!) that are unique to Lehman Caves. It's hard to beat Carlsbad Caverns after you have been there but the ranger was very interesting on this tour and did an awesome job showing enthusiasm for the cave and the park.  

Back on "the loneliest highway in America" to our last stop for this blog post, Fallon, Nevada. It was good to see a real "town" again and they even had a TJMaxx! 😉 Dave is mortified that I mentioned that before saying the Naval base where the "top gun" school is located.😆Our Harvest Host stop here was at an Alpaca farm and we were warmly greeted by our hosts and Thunder (below).

We learned all about Alpacas and the kitties were also quite curious (see them in the doorway of Phoebe).  They had just been sheared about a month ago so they looked a little funny with their "mops" (top of the head) so much longer than the rest of their body. Clarabell (brown one below) was especially cute with her big mop but only 1 year old body!

Next we are off to Lassen Volcanic Park in California. Thank you for following our blog and for the prayers along the way! 

We'll leave you with some video of the loneliest road in America.