Saturday was pretty much just a long day of driving. We checked out of our campground near Yosemite and started driving toward Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California.

We decided on our way that we would try to attend a Saturday vigil Mass since we would pretty much be in the middle of nowhere on Sunday. We found a great, older church named Sacred Heart in Red Bluff, California. And even better, we found a place to park the RV. That’s not always easy, especially when the church is in a downtown area like it was in Red Bluff. After Mass, we drove the rest of the way to our campground.

We woke up Sunday in the cool air of northern California.  I relish the cool air in places like this, knowing how hot and muggy June can be in South Carolina.  Some of the girls took one step outside and started complaining about how it’s too cold, but I absolutely love it.  I still dream of being able to spend an entire winter in someplace like Maine in the middle of a forest.  Anywho (as Isaac and Granny B would say)…

Since today is Father’s Day (Happy Father’s Day to all of you men out there who are fathers in any way!), we slept in a bit.  When Charlie got up for his walk, I lugged my lazy self out of bed and started on a breakfast for him: bacon, hashbrowns, and fruit.  The kids all were able to wake up to the smell of bacon sizzling in the cast iron frying pan.  That’s a pretty great way to wake up in my opinion!

After breakfast, we drove to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  This was a park that I had wanted to see 10 years ago, primarily because I enjoy learning about volcanoes and because I had never even heard of it prior to finding it on the map on that trip.  This was the kind of park that I had thought Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite would be – heavily and beautifully forested. 

At the very beginning to the park, we found a great information center – just billboards with all kinds of history, geology, tourist, and wildlife information for the park.  The road through the park looked like it was pretty curvy, so we ditched the RV there and took the car into the park.  Unfortunately, when we reached the entrance fee area of the park, we were told that only 9 miles of the road were open due to heavy snow drifts of 12’ in the higher elevations.

Well, we’ll take what we can get, so we drove the 9 miles in to a parking lot called the Devastation Area.  There we were able to read about two explosions of Lassen Peak in 1915 and the damage that they did.  We also walked up the closed road for a little ways to just get some nice views of the area. 

Back to the car, we headed to the visitor center and museum where we were able to watch a great movie regarding the national park and the fact that it has four different types of volcanoes present in the park: shield, plug dome, composite, and cinder cone.  Well, we weren’t able to see as much of the park as we would have liked, but we were definitely happy that we came.

Having picked up the RV, we started going north toward Crater Lake.  While driving through Lassen National Forest, we stopped at Subway Cave.  This was an opportunity to walk through a lava tube cave, something that I didn’t even know existed until 10 years ago when I saw them on a map at Mt St Helens.  We weren’t able to see them 10 years ago, so I was most assuredly excited at the prospect.  Caves have always been a thing of mine.  It was quite cool in there (temperature wise), and well worth the stop to experience it. 

Next we drove toward Crater Lake. We still had a good bit of the day left, so we were hopeful that we could go ahead and see Crater Lake. The drive between the two national parks took us past Mt Shasta, so we were able to have some beautiful views of it.

When we reached Crater Lake, we once again noticed that a good bit of the rim drive was closed to vehicles because the snow had not yet cleared. Unfortunately, the kids weren’t able to get their national park stamp of Crater Lake due to the fact that the visitor center was already closed.

We were able to get up to the lake and finally see it. 10 years ago when we had visited, the lake hadn’t been visible at all due to fog, so the kids were excited to finally see the beauty and uniqueness that is Crater Lake.

Rebecca