In the Shadow of Lassen

 

A two weekend event gave me five days in the middle to go exploring in this area of stark beauty. Timing is everything. Late April and early May.  Before that and the snow in the mountains makes this impossible.  After May, and the heat is too much.

Camp Discovery is in Red Bluff, California. Just east of Hwy 5 there is a lovely campground right on the Sacramento River. Day use is free, and there is a hiking trail that is completely wheelchair accessible. This will become my stop of choice when I trek up and down Hwy 5. Lots of room for trailers and bigger trucks down at the boat ramp parking.

Don't bother with the town.  It is a perfect example of everything I don't like in a town.  The old lovely stuff is being allowed to rot and lots of plastic, ultra corporate stuff abounds.  And none of the local stuff tries to be anything but adequate. 

Head east out Hwy 36 to Hog Lake Trailhead. Open grassland with volcanic ridges and towering volcanos. This area is about breath.  It takes my breath away. It makes me take deep gulps of air.

Wear a hat as there is little shade. But you will find that your eyes can see forever.

This walk has everything in it that I usually don't like, but the utter calm on this trail and looking out at the mountains was perfect.  The trail from the parking area is a gravel road, gated from traffic.  As the road turns the left turn there is a path that I didn't take that veers off to the right to circle Hog Lake, currently a drought affected pond.

Going straight, one can follow cow trails up onto a volcanic ridge. This is the river of lava from one of the volcanos, hardened into a boulder field that looks out onto Mt. Shasta. If you have never seen her, when you see her in person you understand why she is considered mystical by so many. But the trails are really just cattle paths and the going is rough.

This type of trail is not usually my sort of thing, but I needed to get in my two miles, so I set my timer for 30 minutes and headed out. The wind was wicked. I was there as the flowers were in bloom, but grass was sparse because of the drought.

This area is so little altered from what the European settlers found that I hear their echoes. I have read several biographies and autobiographies of the folks that settled  here and further north in Oregon. Theirs is a story that differs from that of many other settlers in other areas. 

Tuesday I set out up Hwy 36. I am not sure all of the places I went thru, but Mineral was one of them. I kind just followed when the GPS showed the weird paths. I was fortunate to find the road being freshly graveled, so I was forced to slow down. I could see the mines, and camps, and odd places.  The people up here are fiercely independent with a wicked sense of humor.

 Manzanita starting to bloom

  

Mt Lassen Park was still closed for winter, but a stop to find a letter box took me off the road a bit. The trees are Ponderosa Pine, Incense Cedar, and Doug Fir. And snow.  This area is a winter playground for cross country ski and other snow sport.

I spent the night at Burney Falls.  More on that in the next post as it deserves its own story. But in the morning I found great sweet potato pancakes at Blackberry Patch Restaurant. Wonderful waitress too.

  

    

And then it got weird.  If you have a lot of welding and machine equipment, and a lot of room, you can build stuff. Packway Materials Like I said, wicked sense of humor. (The last photo is not mine.)

My hunt for boxes with rubber stamps took me along a series of lesser traveled roads as I drove back to Red Bluff: Bella Vista, past the preserve and Parkville Cemetery. Old ranch houses. Fishing spots along the Sacramento. All the while going thru grassy range land, interspersed with those lava ridges. 

Several places I saw frames for large nests on the utility poles. This had a bald eagle in residence.

Back in Red Bluff I found the Inez Adobe. This sign maybe sums up the people in this far north east part of California, a part that is not much talked about in Sacramento. Most of the people that settled here came because they got pushed out of other places and so they settled in this place that was not much wanted. The indigenous people were some of the last and least developed tribes of the US. The Hispanic settlers did not much want to come to this cold stark place so they did not build the great missions. The Euro/Americans were of what became known as the working class, blue collar, lower income folk that came cross country. Their history was not important enough to cherish and write down. But their families still hold on to this beautiful and startling place.

I want to go back.  There is so much I did not see: Monastery of St John, Sulfur Work, Bumpass Hell, Hat Creek. I think I might host a possible meet up.