Wilderness Wandering

Thursday, January 23,2025

We departed from Milwaukee. It was sunny and cold in WI.  We flew to San Francisco via Seattle. Our flights went smoothly and we arrived and picked up our rental car and drove to our hotel close to the airport for the night.

We rented from Alamo Rental Car and they let Tim pick which car he wanted in the mid SUV class we had reserved. Tim chose a Mazda CX-50. He pretty much fell in love with the car. 

In the dark, the hotel looked a little sketchy from the outside, but the room was great!

Friday, January 24,2025

With the time difference, we were awake early. We got ready and were on the road by 8:00 AM. It was a 4-1/2 hour drive to Lassen Volcanic National Park.

There was a lot of pretty scenery on the way.

Lassen Volcanic National Park is situated at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Northern California. The park was created in 1916 after several huge eruptions. The park receives about 450,000 visitors per year. 

As we got closer to the park we were going up in elevation. The visitor center is at 6736 feet and Lassen Peak is 10,457 feet.  There was still very little snow until all of a sudden the road was carved through snow banks six feet tall! 

As we drove along the road, we saw major areas of dead trees. We thought they were from the fire that kept us away from this park last summer when we were out this way. 

We stopped and took our photo with the park sign. We pulled into the Visitor Center parking lot. There were only about 10-12 cars in the lot. It was a Sunday and there was a family with small kids having a blast sledding on the hills right by the parking lot. The parents had their lawn chairs set up by the car and were drinking hot cocoa? while the kids were enjoying the slopes. 

We entered the VC and got the passport stamp. We talked to several rangers. We learned that all the dead trees we saw on our way in were actually burned by the 2021 Dixie Fire, that burned more than 960,000 acres and is the second largest wildfire in California history.   We watched the park movie. We learned there are four types of volcanoes. The last eruption of Lassen Peak was in 1917. Pretty much the only trail that was open is called The Sulphur Works Trail. It is a 2 mile round trip hike on a packed snow trail. It was quite icy. We would have liked to have our micro spikes with us. At the end of the trail there are boiling mud pots and hissing steam vents. It is reminiscent of Yellowstone. 

We met interesting people on the trail. We met two men from France who had a 3 week old baby with them. They flew to CA to adopt the newborn and were seeing the park while waiting for the baby’s passport. Next we met Jonas from Berlin, Germany who was car camping. He is a student in British Columbia. He is a bit of a car guy and Tim greatly enjoyed talking about cars and driving on The Autobahn with him. As we hiked back to the VC a skier gracefully schussed down a hill right beside us! 

We drove to our accommodations for the night. We stayed at The Village at Highlands Ranch. It is the closest accommodations to the park. This time of year, we had it almost to ourselves. We had a wonderful salmon dinner in their restaurant and sat near the huge stone hearth enjoying the blazing fire while we used the wifi. The rooms don’t have any. The room was spotless and comfortable. 

Saturday, January 25,2025

Although we had planned to spend three days at Lassen, there wasn’t much more we could do this time of year. 

We decided to head to the coast where there wouldn’t be snow. 

We drove west through Napa and Sonoma counties gorgeous rolling hills and grapevines. We arrived at the Pomo Canyon trailhead. 

The 6 mile round trip hike begins in a beautiful redwood grove and ends at a bluff overlooking the ocean. There were amazing mushrooms along the trail!

We did climb down to Shell Beach and do a little tide pooling before heading back to the Pomo Canyon end.  This wonderful trail is part of Sonoma Coast State Park.

We backtracked to Santa Rosa and stayed at a modest Quality Inn. We ventured into downtown Santa Rosa and had a delicious meal at La Rosa. 

Sunday, January 26,2025

Santa Rosa wasn’t part of our original itinerary, so I was researching what there is to do. I discovered the Charles Schulz Museum is located there. We decided to check it out before we left and were very happy we did! The museum is a great tribute to a much beloved artist and his cast of characters!

After the museum, we drove an hour south and did something Tim truly enjoys. No, we didn’t go for a bike ride. We visited the campus of UC- Berkeley. There was an event for kids on the football field, so we were able to walk in and see the stadium. 

After that, we drove another hour south and visited the campus of Stanford University. We were able to enjoy the Rodin sculpture garden there. By then it was late afternoon.

We decided to return our rental car, so we didn’t have to on Monday morning. On our way, Tim noticed we were next to a Waymo, self driving car!

We enjoyed our short visit to Lassen Volcanic National Park. I believe that we will have to fit a visit back in the summer into a future trip so we can explore more off their 150 miles of hiking trails. 

Tomorrow, we head to Hawaii for more National Park touring.