On the Road Again

"On the road again..." The lyrical phrase kept running through my mind as we crossed back into California, heading north, but I couldn't remember all the words to the song. This is day #52, and we are getting pretty good at nomadic lifestyle in a little red peanut shell.

Cows grazed peacefully all the way from Reno through Susanville. Then the windshield fogged. Temperatures had dropped dramatically: higher elevation, more moisture in the air, grey snow clouds overhead. We stopped 30 miles south of snow-covered Lassen in Chester, CA, for pictures. Brrrrr! Twenty-five degrees colder than Reno!

"You'll want a jacket over your sweatshirt," suggested Andy. He knows me well.

"Major deer area." I read the sign. We didn't see any. "Someone forgot to tell the deer," I told Andy. We watched for bears too. "I've seen more of both in New England this year than I've seen out here."

We turned into Lassen Volcanic National Park at 5,775 feet. A new solar-powered Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center welcomed the few brave tourists to the self-described "remote outpost."

"You may only drive in 1.3 miles," warned the ranger. "Geothermal activity, not snow."

At the turn-around, a geothermal mudpot boiled three inches from the curb. Steam billowed from the vent across the road.

"You will see more from the North Entrance," the ranger had suggested. He gave us directions, a 40-mile detour for about ten miles of park road on the north face at Manzanita Lake. We shed our jackets and went for it, hoping to beat out clouds streaming in from the southwest.

We chose what the ranger called "the better of the two ten-mile stretches of road" into the North Entrance. Three one-lane bridges spanned creeks as Lanes Valley Road, Wildcat Road and Black Butte Road twisted and turned through the canyon. Ironically, as we headed north and up, the temperatures climbed into the 70's.

Mount Lassen blew out the side like Mount St. Helens did in 1980. A group of local businessmen, led by Benjamin F. Loomis, came out to see the devastation from May 19, 1915. The mountain blew a second time on May 22, right after they left the valley. Loomis had climbed the crater six or seven times in 1914, and his legacy to Lassen includes a seismographic station, a visitor center and many photographs.

We walked about four miles on the Devastation, Lily Pad Pond, Manzanita Lake and Reflection Lake trails. A brilliant sun burned off all but puffy clouds, and sun-capped Lassen rose majestic above the pines. When we returned to the parking lot at the North Visitor Center around 4:30 p.m., everyone had left. Smoke drifted up from eight or ten prescribed burns we had passed along the trail, creating a filmy haze in the setting sun in a place of awesome power, breath-taking beauty and incredible loneliness.