Crater Lake NP to Red Bluff CA
GREETINGS FROM RED BLUFF,
California (CA), USA
“Cal-i-forn-ya, here I come” …….
– (come on, you know the rest)
– and for us a whole new part of the state we have not been to before.
This morning we made our way out of Crater Lake National Park via the south entrance so over our 2 days there wasn’t much we didn’t see. The sun gave a brief glimpse early but it was soon behind the clouds where it spent much of the day.
A brief look at the sun today
It was cold overnight and a few spots of rain. It was 0 Celsius when we left and the car had ice on it from the rain.
The drive to the border was first through more pine forests as we descended the mountains and then mainly grazing land down to the California border. Looming large ahead, peaking above the low clouds, was Mt Shasta. This mountain is basically the bottom of the Cascade Mountain range which we have been criss-crossing through out our trip. It was a bit bizarre as we had only seen the bottom of Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens and Mt Hood further north and now we were only seeing the very top of Mt Shasta !
Mt Shasta peaking out of the clouds
We really did a loop around the mountain on our drive. This route is known as the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway and extends all the way down to our main destination – Lassen Volcanic National Park. The road again filtered through a number of National Forests on the way. As we got closer to the National Park, the landscape again changed to evidence of the extended lava flows and deposits from the old volcanic activity.
Lassen Volcanic Visitors Centre
Lassen Volcanic is really a very recent event. The mountain last exploded in 1915 and lava continued to flow for about 3 years after. One side of the mountain blew out in the eruption. On the other side, a section of the mountain still has some activity with a few geysers and vents similar to what we saw in Yellowstone – nowhere near the number though.
At the moment there is one “mud pot” spurting vigorously, enough for part of the walkway to be cordoned off due to the spattering mud. So there is some volatility about. This is really quite a small national park and probably one of the least visited.
Spurting mud pot
We only had about an hour to drive from the National Park to our stop at Red Bluff . Along the way, we came across more evidence of the recent fires with burnt out bushland along the way. It is also very, very dry. As we reached lower elevations, there was also the overhang of smoky haze extending for miles and miles. We had stopped at a scenic overlook earlier in the day around Mt Shasta and a fire brigade unit stopped in the carpark near us. As we were leaving we commented that we hoped they were
Little geysers
having a quiet day. The fireman told us that there were still a lot of active fires around and that most of their “regular” fireman were away fighting the fires. They were waiting for a group of volunteers they had to rely on to man their local brigade while the others were away.
Red Bluff is a pretty small place. The lady at reception at the hotel was amazed we were from Australia – “why would you want to come to Red Bluff ?” she exclaimed. We have actually had this response at a couple of places.
For dinner we decided on Applebees again. We shared nachos – which turned out to be huge ! and for main we had different chicken dishes – Adrienne had Napa Chicken & Portobellos and I had Cedar Grilled Lemon Chicken. Well, we actually had it all together as the mains literally arrived as we took the first bit of the nachos !
As I said at the start, it has been cloudy all day and as I write this we are getting a bit of a thunderstorm and reasonable rain. Hopefully the rain will be worthwhile for the firefighters and the lightning wont start new fires !