Talking of road trips, I love it. And I am really glad that DH enjoys them too. I know a few who dont enjoy road trips. DH's brother and friends drove to Niagra Falls and bil said he was tired driving for 3 hours only. I know a couple who dont enjoy driving. I think they are missing a lot of fun. Unlike the long and dry I-5 down South, the North route was pretty scenic. And thankfully not too much long weekend traffic. This was primarily because most of the places are still under snow. I couldnt believe that its May and there was still multiple feet of snow where we were headed. These places were so exotic, its a pity they are open only 3 months of the year. But also, I guess these places are beautiful only because they are untampered by humans 9 months in a year.
Day 1
We started at 8:30AM on Saturday which was pretty early by our standards, given that I packed lemon rice for our trip also in the morning. On our first stop at a rest area, we realized we forgot to bring our drinks, two Gatorades and two Sobe Leans. By noon, we were on CA-36, the road from I-5 into the mountains leading to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We passed a place called Mineral, with a population of 90, I didnt miss any zeroes. As we climbed up the mountains slowly, the view changed from dry brown to lush green and sunny. The snow level was about 6500 feet, which was most of the park itself. We saw patches of ice and snow on the mountains, still it was not chilly.
We just planned to drive around the park for a while, take a hike and go our way. By 12:30 we were inside the park.
Our first stop was near Sulfur Works. We distinctly smelt sulfur as we passed. There was this huge hole, ash colored on the outside, making eerie noises, as hot water splashed inside, fuming on the outside. On the other side of the road we saw a mound coated in yellow which was sulfur, and fumes emanating from them. Only a few feet by the side was snow. Its really weird I tell you. Volcano is heat from underground and snow is cold, I dont know how the two can mingle. Those were the only geothermal things we saw, unfortunately since Bumpass Hell, and Boiling Springs Lake were all closed due to snow.
We drove along the park road, it was b-e-a-utiful. Snow is beautiful to look at. But to see snow you have to drive in the bitter cold in snow. The best part here was, there was snow all over and still the temperature was in the 70s, and very sunny and the roads werecleaned up and hazardless. Ideal I would say.
We reached the other end of the park after an hour or so, which was longer than we expected. On the way we saw Hot Rock, which was a huge rock that was spewed out from Mt Lassen when it erupted in 1915, and had travelled over 5miles to its current location. The magnitude of an eruption enthralled me. We drove past Devastated Area, which as the name suggests was the area devastated when the volcano erupted. We reached Manzanita Lake. It was a little disappointing. It was too small. We had our lunch there, and started hiking around the lake. There were a lot of mosquitoes by the lake, and like everything else here, they were huge. Mt Lassen looked picturesque with patches of snow all over it.
I tried to capture the mountain's reflection on the lake, it would have come out better if not for the ripples in the water due to the wind. The hike took longer than we thought it would as the lake was bigger than we thought it was. There were folks fishing all along the lake, kids canoeing, couples romancing.
It was about 4PM when we left the park to drive towards Klamath Falls in Oregon. We drove past Shasta Lake and Mt Shasta. The place was a little too crowded. The route became very beautiful from then on. DH made multiple attempts to capture Mt Shasta as we were driving, and finally managed to get something.
The drive on the mountains was like driving in a video game, with the road winding sleekly but dangerously, with umpteen trailers chugging along the upslope. We were driving into Oregon for the first time.
Our little Lodge was not to be found in the GPS. The directions from the lodge website was long, very descriptive. We wanted to reached the lodge before it got dark. Route 97 was too empty. No vehicles in the front, no vehicles behind us. I got a little paranoid, as we neared our lodge. Of course, various horrid movie scenes flashed in my mind, it was almost dark, when a lone pair of lights showed up behind us. We had about 7 miles to go, and I was prodding DH to drive faster, so we can get to the lodge before the lights came closer to us. The Lodge was eerie too, we had to drive a quarter mile from the entrance, to the lodge, on a gravel road. There was no other car in sight in front of the lodge. Creepy it was.
Nowadays we have all these chains of reliable hotels we can stay in, like Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn, Hilton Garden, etc etc, the uniformness is what makes us feel secured.. and safe. But there is no personal touch in any of these places. This lodge had only 7 rooms. Yes. It was run by a lady, who also looked creepy to me at first, but turned out to be really sweet. No keys for the room!, we had to just leave the door closed. The lady said it was pretty safe around here. No TV in the room. The room was miniscule. No AC in the room too. There was a small window, which when left open, small midgets come through, the lady said, we kept it closed through out our stay. She gave a fan for us to use in case it got too warm. When we enquired about dinner, she said most places closed by 8, the one that was open late was over 20miles from there. We ate leftover lemon rice and slept on a super creeky bed. In the middle of the night, we heard a sound of something crashing on the floor above us. For all we knew we were on the topmost floor. There was may be an attic above, we pacified ourselves and slept. The next day we would realize that it was the fan that fell off the top of the chest and had been running upside down all night.
Thus ended the first day.
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