After a great week at Lake Tahoe for the Fourth of July, we made our way to Lassen Volcanic National Park.
Honey Lake Rest Area
Lassen is a 3-4 hour drive from Lake Tahoe. Therefore, we split up the drive and stopped overnight at Honey Lake Rest Area. This rest area was the perfect stop. The views were great, and we had excellent cell service. We worked a partial day here on Friday before continuing to Lassen.
Manzanita Lake Campground
We entered Lassen Volcanic National Park through the north entrance because we had reservations at Manzanita Lake Campground. However, for an RV the north entrance makes sense regardless. The road coming from the south is steep, windy, and would not be much fun in an RV.
Manzanita Lake was a nice little campground for the weekend. It would not have worked during the week though because there is absolutely no cell reception. After setting up camp, we did a short, easy hike around Manzanita Lake. The lake is beautiful but there were signs everywhere about danger from river otters. Apparently a woman was seriously injured a week or two before we got here by one.
After our hike, we cooked a hearty dinner of steak, potatoes, and asparagus.
Hiking Lassen Peak
On Saturday, we planned to have a relaxing morning, pack a picnic, drive through the park, and at some point hike Lassen Peak.
For lunch, we made some steak and potato burritos from last night’s leftovers. We stopped off at Kings Creek for lunch. On the way, we stopped by the Devastated Area for a quick hike with information about the volcanic eruption of 1915.
After lunch, we continued the drive to the Lassen Peak Trailhead. There are over 150 miles of hiking trails in the park. However, we decided to hike Lassen Peak because it is visible all over the park.
The hike is 5 miles total with about 2,000 feet of elevation gain. It isn’t an easy hike, but it is much easier than our Upper Yosemite Falls hike a couple of weeks ago. Your reward for reaching the summit is an amazing view of Mount Shasta in the distance.
Sulphur Works
When we finished hiking Lassen Peak, we continued driving past Emerald Lake and Bumpass Hell to Sulphur Works. Sulphur Works is an example of some of the geothermal activity in the park. It consists of a bubbling mud pool right off of the road. This doesn’t sound that impressive, but it was really bubbling. It surprised both of us.
We considered hiking Bumpass Hell on the way back, but we were both tired from Lassen Peak and ready to relax at the campground.
La Siesta Hammock Chair
Leigh received a La Siesta Hammock Chair from The Dyrt to test and review while we were in Mammoth Lakes. However, we hadn’t found limbs low enough to test it out. We still didn’t find any low limbs at Manzanita Lake, but we improvised with some tie down straps.
We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by the RV in our chairs. For dinner, we had leftover ribs from our batch in Lake Tahoe.
We have reservations near McCloud, CA next, but we are a little unsure of what the next few days will bring.