Bumpass Hell

For our second day of exploring Lassen Volcanic National Park, we started at the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center first thing this morning. M and J worked on completing the activity page for this location, while I stepped outside to snap some pictures.

Brokeoff Mountain, part of the remnants of Mount Tehama

Mount Diller (left) and Point Pinnacle (right)

Tame the Volcano

After our super fun kayak tour at Whiskeytown NRA this morning, we drove about an hour east to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Our first stop was the Loomis Museum, which is located near the northwest entrance to the park and by Manzanita Lake. We went through our usual visitor center routine - watch the park movie, work on junior ranger activities, and get the passport stamp.

Kayaking Whiskeytown

It takes a little bit of marketing to get certain family members on board for another road trip. The selling points for making the long trek up to Northern California were:

• Visiting two more national park units, Whiskeytown NRA and Lassen Volcanic NP
• Redeeming two free Marriott hotel stays that we earned from a promo during our spring break trip
• Sleeping one night at a motel with twin beds (no complaints about sharing with a bed hog)
• Going back to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
• Kayaking on Whiskeytown Lake

Saving Summer

Ever since we got back from spring break, I had been dreading summer. Why? Because there was nothing to look forward to! No Saiki-delic adventure to plan, no place to go! We knew that nearly M's whole summer would be likely be taken up between freshman basketball and marching band. Since we didn't know whether or not he'd make the team and what the schedule would be if he did, we couldn't book anything in advance. A certain sibling wanted to go on vacation anyway, leaving him behind to fend for himself. Tempting as it was to consider, it was not an option. *sigh*

Once we knew that M had been selected for the summer team and got the schedule from the coaches, we saw that there was a small window of opportunity at the end of July. In spite of layoff rumors at my work, we decided to go ahead a take a quick trip. Because we've picked all of the low hanging fruit, we have to keep expanding our radius to get to national park units we haven't visited yet!