Day 2: Weed, CA. to Fallon, NV

Stops:

Mt. Shasta, CA

Cassel, CA

Hat Trick, CA

Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

Reno, NV

Fallon, NV

We stayed overnight at the Pilot Truck Stop.  It's a fabulous place to park your RV, car, or truck for free.  They have showers you can rent, but we didn't need that quite yet.  The bathrooms are actually quite nice.  

It was quite cold in the morning, waking up to 27 degrees.  Brrrrr.  However, we also woke up to the sunrise behind Mt. Shasta.  It's quite a site to see such a giant mountain lit up by the morning sun.

We headed out from Weed, CA and had a quick stop in Mt. Shasta, CA to get some coffee.  It was about 7:30 AM but after going down their Main st., almost nothing was open. There were a couple of coffee shops, but most of them were closed, except for Yak Coffee house.  Good cup of coffee, but an interesting environment with business-like up front, and a bunch of hippie-looking people in the back.  

Time to go to Lassen Volcanic NP along Hwy 89.  The drive reminds me very much of driving through parts of Bend, OR near Mt. Bachelor.  It was a very pretty drive, and I recommend it.

Our first stop was  at Burney Falls State Park.  A short 0.3 mile hike to the base of the falls yields a breathtaking view of this waterfall, parts of the falls appearing halfway down the rocky surfaces.  It really is picturesque.  We managed to also spot Chibo's doppelgänger there.

Just after the tiny fishing town of Cassel, CA is a collection of junk art.  People, insects, and animals made out of scrap or junked metal and painted.  Finally!  Our first roadside attraction.  My favorite was the giant ant chasing B, but I think B's favorite might be between the weiner dog and the giraffe.

We also drove though Hat Trick which has a statue of a muffler man.  This one was painted like a rancher, complete with a branding iron, and named "Big Roy.".  The owners had it in their front lawn and we found them weeding around the statue.  They even setup a picnic table and had a guestbook for us to sign. Everyone should sign the guestbook, not only to let the owners know that someone stopeed to see it, but also to see where other people are coming from.  We saw one family that had come from Moscow, Russia.

Finally, we arrived at the first national park on our itinerary, Lassen Volcanic NP.  We entered from the north side, passing up Mineral and Reflection Lakes and stopping at the visitor's center at Loomis museum, where we caught a 20 min video of the park.  Lassen is the only place in the world that holds all 4 types of volcanoes.  I can remember three of them at the time of this writing, but I'm sure you can google the 4th one.  There are shield, cinder cone, composite, and the 4th type of volcano that escapes me.  

We drove through the Chaos Jumbles, large piles of volcanic rock, and then through the dwarf forest stopping at a giant polished rock known as Hot Rock.  It was warm to the touch, but probably because of the sun shining on it.  We were headed to our first short hike, Devastated Area.  This was an area where  in 1915, Lassen Peak erupted and drastically changed the landscape with it's wide mudflows, engulfing any trees and dumping volcanic rocks up to some 3 miles away.  Today, some 98 years later, you can see that the trees have come back but are not very tall, a small reminder how long it must take for trees to get large.

We stopped next at Paradise Meadows at Hat Lake.  We went into the meadows were we came across a small stream and a beautiful backdrop of trees and mountains.  For now, this is what I want to call my quiet place, the place you go in your mind when you are stressed.  You can hear the gentle flow of the water, the birds chirping, and the wind swaying the meadow grasses.  I even came across a large beaver dam.

Our main plan was to hike Bumpass Hell trail, so we continued there next.  However, within the park it went from being able to see the ground and rivers, to deep, snow-covered grounds with rivers carved out through the snow and frozen lakes.  This meant bad news for us though and we were right.  When we arrived to the trailhead, there was sign marked that it was closed and a ranger nearby.  I talked to the ranger about when the trail normally opens and she told me maybe mid to late June.  Guess we got there a month too early.  The ranger did show me part of the trail which wasn't snow covered and went along the edge of a mountain and then she pointed the large accumulation of steep snow that was basically impassable.  Ok, so another disappointment, but we can live with that.  Maybe we'll come back in the future in the summer.  The ranger did tell me that there was a trail by the Sulpher Works area that goes about a mile to Ridge Lakes, so we decided to go to Sulpher Works and try to hike it.

Sulpher Works was also pretty disappointing as we were only able to see one bubbling cauldron of mud and water and of course the sulpher smell.  We grabbed our packs for practice and started up the steep hike to Ridge Lakes.  About 1/2 mile in though, the trail was completely covered in snow again and we couldn't determine where to go.  It was a clear sign today, that were weren't going to be able to hike far today, so we decided to head out to Reno, NV.

I'd only every been to Reno once in my life and that was just in the airport as it was a stop on our flight.  When we arrived into Reno, we didn't exactly know where "the strip" was but I was able to look it up and determine it was S. Virginia Ave.  We took a drive down the strip and saw several of the casinos and the lights.  After parking, we walked up and down the strip, stopping by in Circus Circus and walking through to Silver Legacy, and finally through El Dorado.  I'd say that El Dorado was probably the best casino on the strip.    We did look at Harrahs and Cal-Neva casino as well.

Finally we headed out to Fallon, NV to sleep at the 24 hr. Wal-Mart Supercenter.  Now, there was part of me that though about getiting on my jammies and walking through Wal-Mart at night hoping that someone would take a picture of me and posting it to the People of Wal-Mart website, but then I realized those people aren't actually intending to be on that website and so I dismissed the idea.

Good night!