We continued West on Highway 36 from Susanville. Just before we came down into the Hat Creek valley we got a good view of the recent fire damage in the valley. Too bad!
We continued up highway 44 to Highway 89 and stopped there at the Cave CG in Old Station, CA about 15 miles North of the North entrance to Lassen NP. We settled in to a nice campsite by Hat Creek. It was pretty cold and raining. In fact while we were at the Visitors Center hail fell in between the rain. Lou fixed posole soup with grille cheese sandwiches.
After lunch we hiked through the Subway Cave, a lava tube cave. It is located across the road from our campground.
Then we drove up in to Lassen National Park. It's mostly closed.
The road is cleared and open 10 miles in to the park to the Devastation Area trailhead parking area. We almost got a view of Lassen Peak there. The top is mostly covered by clouds. In a few more weeks the road will be open and the crowds will have arrived, but for now, we were one of only a couple of visitors.
We stopped at Manzqanita Lake at the geese lined up to greet us, an advantage of being one of the few visitors. I guess.
Manzanita Lake is mostly frozen over. The part that wasn't made for nice reflective pictures.
I fixed Italian sausage with chili sizes and corn chips for dinner. What a feast for Mothers day.
Monday: (05/10) It was snowing when we got up. It's not cold so it melted before or when it hit the ground. We're in the trees and it's overcast so the solar isn't expected to work today so we started the generator, the first time in months. The weather forecast doesn't indicated sunny days until Wednesday. We heard from a neighbor in the campground that the campground was full Saturday but they all left quickly in the morning Sunday because of the rain. Probably also because it was time to head home for weekenders. Either way, we're pretty much by ourselves in our half of the campground. Lou baked a chorizo omelet for breakfast.
After breakfast we drove up to a trialhead and hiked around a the Spatter Cone Trail of about two miles looking at spatter cones, tumulos and lava tubes.
There are about 22 features (spatter cones. tumulos and lava tubes) along the trail but they are difficult to get a good picture of, especially in the snow. I did catch some manzanita blossoms.
There also was supposed to be a good view of Mt Lassen but the low clouds obscured views of all the mountains. On the second half of the trail it started to snow making the hike even more interesting.
When we returned to camp we had lunch. Tomato bisque soup and ham and cheese sandwiches then we took a final walk by the river next to our camp and departed.
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