California, part 3B, Lassen National Park..the park!

When you think of National Parks, most people name Yellowstone, Yosemite & the Grand Canyon. Until we started planning our trip to Northern California I had never heard of Lassen Volcanic National Park. In fact many Californians have not heard of it either!

The park was first established as Cinder Cone and Lassen Peak National Monuments in 1907. Then Lassen Peak began erupting in 1914, with the peak being in 1915. In 1916 it was named a national park because of its significance as an active volcanic landscape. All four types of volcanoes in the world plus active hydrothermal areas are found in the parks 106,000 acres.

Lassen's elevation ranges from 5900 to 10,457 feet, which means they get a lot of snow. When we visited in early June, many of the park roads had not been cleared, so you could only go so far before you came to a gate. Being from Georgia we love to find snow in June, it's always a highlight of our trip.

Mt. Lassen...summit is over 10,000 feet in elevation

This is in the Devastated area, which means it was in the path of the 1914-15 eruption.

Alyssa is our trip videographer. It's hard to get a picture of her without camera in hand.

Snowball fights happened a lot, even when I was trying to snap a picture of the girls. Thanks Dad!

OK....so this one is a posed shot, but snowballs flew all morning!

We were at the north entrance to the park, Manzanita Lake.

Our lunch by the lake was windy and cold.

Manzanita flowers are abundant in the west, hence the name Manzanita Lake.

Alyssa helps Kate cross the log.

We took a hike around Manzanita Lake. We enjoyed the views of Mt. Lassen, and were rewarded with bald eagles soaring overhead.

The speck in the sky is a bald eagle. Alyssa took several shots of them sitting in the tree, but she hasn't sent them to me yet...check back later for those pictures.

When made our first trip out west in 2002 we encountered Ponderosa Pine. These trees are vanilla scented. The girls were excited to sniff pine trees again, and thought we had properly identified the Ponderosa. The park staff informed us that these pines were called Jeffrey Pines, therefore the girls like to smell Jeffrey! The rangers also told us that after smelling Jeffrey Pines, that Ponderosa's would smell more like pineapple. Who knew?

A few miles north of the park we found the Subway Caves, a lava tube. These caves were formed in the Hat Creek lava flow less than 20,000 years ago. We weren't prepared to go into the caves, because we didn't have flashlights. We tried taking cell phones & iPods to light the way...that didn't work. There was a visitor center just down the road and you could rent flashlights. Much better with flashlights!! Here we are going into the lava tube.

It is really dark inside the cave, especially when everyone turns off their light. There were signs to read that pointed out various features. It was a cool experience.

Apparently we were not the first Nobles family to travel this way. In 1852 some hardy Nobles trekked across this area, and the park road actually follows their trail.

We enjoyed our time in Lassen, but I would suggest visiting a little later in the summer when more of the roads are open. The last leg of our journey takes us south to Yosemite, a long drive in the silver van.