A Painted Landscape

10,000 years ago there was a huge volcanic mountain 1,000 feet taller than Mt. Lassen called Mt. Tehama.  About that time it collapsed into itself, leaving a huge caldera eight miles across.  Today, the bottom of that caldera has several thermal areas that are all connected to hot magma miles below the surface. The largest of these areas is called Bumpass Hell, named for the old mountain guide who discovered it and who, while he was leading a group of tourists through it, fell through the crust into the boiling mud below (hence the boardwalks you see in the pictures).  Bumpass Hell is strangely beautiful and unique, reminding me of Yellowstone (though vastly smaller).  Some of the steam vents are superheated to 350 degrees and there are dozens of boiling pools.  The whole place reeked of rotten eggs (sulphur dioxide) and there was a constant roar from the largest steam vent.

The hike back from Bumpass Hell had some nice views ;-)

Sunrise in Lassen

Lassen National Park

Back in our familiar little home on wheels after a great trip to Chicago and Massachusetts, we took two days to drive up to Lassen National Park.  We spent the night in Chico to grocery shop (filling up our new fridge), wash the truck and generally recharge after some grueling travel and the KU concert. We landed in a National Forest campground just outside of the entrance to Lassen and found a very nice spot in the woods.

Our first day we decided to drive the length of the park road from the South entrance to the North entrance and back.  No long hikes today, we just saw some of the easily accessible sights, spent some time at the visitor center and made a list of where we wanted to go later.

Lassen is a plug dome volcano (the largest in the world) that erupted in a big way between 1914 and 1921, similar to the Mt. St. Helens eruption some years ago.  Much of Lassen park is the crater of a much larger volcano that erupted thousands of years ago and still has the remnants of that eruption in the form of thermal features similar to--but on a much smaller scale than--Yellowstone.  It is a beautiful little mountain range that normally has snow on the peaks all year, but this year is bone dry due to the drought.  We look forward to exploring it more!

Scientists constantly monitor the Lassen area for warning signs of an eruption

We took a short hike to Lily Pond.  Unfortunately, the drought has taken its toll :-(

The now muddy Lily Pond was a great place to see animal tracks.  These looked to our untrained eyes like they could be from a bear.

Lynnae caught between a rock and a hard place.  This boulder was once a 1000 degree hunk of lava that was carried three miles by a river of ash and hot mud.

Hat Lake, formed by the 1915 eruption, is now filling in and becoming a meadow thanks to the beavers and natural sedimentation.

The high meadows that feed Kings Creek with Mt. Lassen in the background.

Sulphur Works, one of the thermal areas in the park, was a sulphur mine from the mid 1800's to the 1950's.  This pool of boiling mud is a key feature there.  We are going to visit Bumpass Hell, the largest thermal area in the park soon.

Keith Urban in Sacramento

Lynnae and I are big country music fans, have spent a cumulative three months in Nashville, gone to numerous bluegrass festivals and seen many of the biggest country artists in person (Willie Nelson, Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, Carrie Underwood, Sugarland and many more).  Our favorite by far is Keith Urban, who we've seen live at least 7 times since 2009. He puts on the best live show I've ever seen (and my history of concerts includes Cream, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Santana, Crosby Stills and Nash ... never saw Hendrix, though, too bad).  KU is an amazing guitar player, singer and entertainer and his shows are 2-1/2 hours of non-stop fun.  We will undoubtedly go see him again next tour.

Our videos are kind of far away, but here is a sample from YouTube if you are curious. Make sure you listen past the middle break to the guitar solo in the last half! (You might need to view this on a computer for the video to work)

A visit to our old neighborhood in Massachusetts

After Chicago, we headed to New England to stay in our old neighborhood (eleven months on the road now!) in Plymouth and visit wonderful friends.  We attended the wedding of our friends Lallie and David on Cape Cod and then generally hung out for a week doing traditional New England stuff, which included multiple bouts of ice cream and beach walking.

Chicago summertime festivals

We tore ourselves away from the fabulous views from Lucas' apartment to catch the Cubs game and also spent Sunday travelling around the city (using the Uber ride-sharing service--fantastic!) to check out some of the street fairs going on.  We hit an arts and crafts festival up in the Bucktown district, a New Orleans Zydeco festival near Wicker Park and a Greek food festival in (strangely enough) Greektown.  Very fun.  We even got to dance some Cajun two-step!  Then we walked a couple miles through downtown back to Lucas' place and admired the architecture.

Sunrise and Moonrise in Mammoth Lakes

Leaving Chicago, we continued on to Massachussetts for a friend's wedding on Cape Cod and to visit our old neighbors in Plymouth.  We are enjoying re-connecting with friends and visiting our old haunts, but also miss the mountains.

Before we left Mammoth, I had a chance to take some sunrise pictures of the Sierra crest and some of the night sky and moonrise light later that day.  My new wide angle lens did a nice job with the milky way and I am looking forward to working on the night shots when we get back to dark sky country.