B & D's USA Hideout: Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Volcanic National Park, the last of the National Parks in California for us to visit. It was also the hardest to see this time of year. In the winter, the visitor's center is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Both times that we have driven through the area in the Lassen National Forest, it has been on a Monday or a Tuesday. Therefore, we couldn't buy our park sticker [insert angry emoji face]. And though you can drive through the area, the only road through the park is closed in winter. We went in through the north entrance and parked the rig in the vacant parking lot. It was a beautiful day and even though we really couldn't experience most of the park, we made the best of it and spent the afternoon exploring what we could. We hiked through the snow around Manzanita Lake, taking time to take pictures and play with my tripod.

Lassen is a very interesting park. Represented in the park are all four types of volcanoes found in the world - shield, composite, cinder cone and plug dome. The area has been volcanically active for the past 300 million years. The most recent eruption for Mt. Lassen was in 1915. Though the area is dormant now, steam vents, boiling springs and bubbling mudpots are active. There is no direct prediction for future eruptions but the sure thing is that it will happen.

Manzanita Lake, Mt. Lassen in the background

Snow Angels!

The best assistant photographer a girl could ask for

From Lassen, we continued west to the small mountain town of Mt. Shasta. We camped at the KOA at the base of the mountain. Temperatures are really mild right now for this time of year so we enjoyed a day of spring like conditions on the mountain. We had a great time and we're happy to add another west coast ski mountain to our list.