Lassen Volcanic National Park

When we were debating on what to do for Labor Day, I happened across Lassen National Volcanic Park. JD and I had never heard of it before, but we love National Parks so decided that the 3 hour drive to get there would be more than worth it.  We had a blast in volcano land. It is kind of weird to think about living on a volcano chain. Mt Lassen is an active volcano but the stretch goes all the way up to British Columbia, so the peaks that we have enjoyed since moving to Oregon including: Crater Lake, Mt St Helens, Mt Jefferson, Mt Hood, Mt Rainier, etc are all volcanos, and a lot of them are active ones too. Kind of neat, the more we learn about these peaks, the more we are able to notice the changes in geography and landscape created by these volcanic cones.

Lassen last erupted in 1915, and it is a beautiful park. We enjoyed walking around Manzanita Lake, seeing the "Hot Rock"-a two ton piece of lava that was tossed from the volcano over 3 miles and was still warm when the photographer took a picture of it back in 1915. We hiked Bumpass Hell, a mini Yellowstone of sorts complete with sulpher air, geysers, mud pots, and fumeroles. We were able to enjoy a gorgeous day and views of the different peaks as we hiked and spent time together as a family. It was also a hot and sunny day. I had brought along 6 waterbottles filled with ice water as well as 5 large gatorades and we drank everything except one Gatorade during this little day trip.

On our way back home we also stopped by Burney Falls, a California State Park that was beautiful! It felt so good to hike down to the level of the falls, the canyon was shaded and the water cooled everything down, complete with a nice breeze through the canyon we were able to cool off, a welcome relief after hiking around in 95-ish degree heat all day.

It was a really fun day, I absolutely love doing things like this with my family. There is something about hiking and being together that is just plain awesome.