Lassen Volcanic NP - Bumpass Hell

This was actually on a Park Service sign.

This was the most interesting of our mini hikes Monday. It is a mini pocket of mud pools, steam vents, and other interesting volcan features. It was just as interesting as things we saw in Yellowstone, but not as massive and spread out.

This was a bubbling mud hole. I can't believe people have to be warned to stay away from this stuff.

This pool was really weird. It's hard to tell from the picture, but there is a film of iron pyrite on top. That's right, it's a pool of molten fool's gold.

Lassen Volcanic NP

We arrived at Lassen in teh early afternoon. It was a really nice fall day so started off with a mini hike around Manzanita Lake (not the one pictured below). It was a very mellow 2 mile loop, which was about all I could handle, sadly. We saw some birds and a few fish, but the highlight was the muskrat that was about 2 feet away. It must have had a bank den because it was swimming with a mouth full of grass and dove out of site within a few feet of us. It was pretty cool. We also listened to a rander talk about birds of prey, specifically Bald Eagles and Osprey. We learned a few adaptions they have, such as hollow feathers and specuals on their feet.

Sun. brought full relief from the food poisoning "adventure" so I was ready to get out and explore. Derek humored me by agreeing to check out an 11 mile lakes loop trail. It was a really pretty trail and for most if it we were alone. It was nice to visit the park during off season because few people were in the camp ground, at the sites or on the hikes. This was one of many lakes we saw that day.

We spent Monday moring doing mini hikes. We started out going to Kings Falls. It was beautiful! And once again, we had it to ourselves. The creek is a basically a tiny, narrow creek that snakes through the valley above, but when it hits this canyon it makes a perfect cascade down the rocks. It was a nice volume of water - a very peaceful creek to sit by and enjoy.

The "money" shot of camping. Derek's reflective glasses tell the story.

Another picture from our Lakes loop. I've never seen so much Manzanita. It was the primary ground cover for acres.

Burney Falls

Derek and I headed out to Lassen Volcanic National Park this weekend. We were going to camp at Burney Falls Friday night because it is close to the park entrance and is quite beautiful. I was delayed with a nasty case of food poisoning though so we departed Sat. am instead. We were able to stop at Berney Falls and do some short hikes, enjoy the sun and have lunch on the shore of the lake.

The falls are quite large considering the size of the creek that feeds them. The creek is spring fed and underground within a half mile of this site. It was quite beautiful and I'm glad we were able to stop and enjoy it.

Oregon Caves

Well, it has been a long time since I've blogged. I worked a lot this summer and didn't really have anything interesting to talk about. However, I am back to a normal work schedule so my weekends are once again my own so we've been exploring. I am also very motivated to blog now because Pete has offered us $10. a posting to promote fun things to do in SOOR. Easy enough!

As you can see, we had our second snow of the season this weekend. Snow level dropped to 4 thousand feet so we were in it at the Caves. It was fun, but what happened to fall???

Oregon Caves is worth checking out.

4th of July parade

Happy belated 4th of July! It was a fun one this year. We all pitched in and made a Momentum float so there was a group of us in the parade. It was fun but kind of a bummer becausee we didn't get to see the other floats or things going on.

Pete was nice and drove the van so the rest of us could be irresponsible and drink cocktails at breakfast.

It ended up being an extremely warm day. Hot really, but I guess that's what the 4th of July is about. There was this random Great Dane dressed up in a poodle skirt and the owner said that the the dog could wear anything because he had huge balls. I didn't mean to get a shot of the dog balls, but I discovered that I did when I was going through the pics from the day. Random but so is dressing a dog up in a skirt.

Derek and I finally had a day off together, well part of a day anyway. We decided to go hiking at Grizzley Peak just outside of town. It was very pretty up there and the views of the Cascades was incredible! We saw Shasta, the rim of Crater Lake, Sisters, Bachelor, Thielson - the whole shibang.

There was a fire on the south side of Grizzley a few years ago. It doens't look like it would be pretty from town but it was really nice up there. There were still lots of wild flowers and it was actually fairly plush.

A beautiful day in SOOR

It was another productive Monday. I "shopped" for a new phone this am and after the frustration of that became unbearable I hopped on the bike. I just don't get the whole on-line shopping thing - it's not for the tactile (or the technologically challenged!) It was a bit chilly when I left but it warmed up nicely. Yesterday started cold and ended even colder. I came home and made chicken soup! Wasn't yesterday the 1st day of summer??? Anyway, Jay and I went out for a quick 60 miler. At the 1/2 way point we stopped at this new mini mart out in Ruch. I love the Beans part because it seems especially random.

Siskiyou National Monument

Derek and I went on an adventure today in Siskiyou National Monument. We hiking near Jenny Creek because Derek likes to rock hunt and fish there. He didn't catch any fish this trip but he did find a deer head. It had maggots crawling on it because it wasn't quite picked clean. GROSS! It still stunk too and he picked it up - nasty, nasty.

Here he is holding his 9 point buck. We saw cougar scat near the cabin but not near the deer head. The body wasn't with the head either so who knows what all ate it. It's fun because there aren't any trails in the Monument. It's fun to bush wack and happen across random stuff like this. We also saw a molted snake skin, tons of butterflies and different dragon flies and a few Western Fence Lizards. Not much else.