Monthly Archives: September 2023

204-Chester, CA

Lassen Volcano National Park 2023

We stayed for a week at an RV Park right on Lake Almanor in the town of Chester.  It’s the largest reservoir in CA and was built and is managed by PG&E, with a hydroelectric plant at the dam.

Chester is near the Lassen Volcano National Park.  We spent one day driving in and around the park to see the beautiful area.

Lassen is considered an active volcano.  It has mudpots and steam vents.  One mudpot is right along the road so we got a good picture of it.  It’s sulphuric and boy did it stink!

The volcano erupted in 1914 and then twice in 1915.  Three days after the first 1915 eruption a group of 6 men, including a photographer, traveled up to see the area and were amazed at the huge devastation area.  The photographer got several really great pictures.  They left early that afternoon and it’s a good thing they did because the 2nd eruption happened later that same afternoon!  With the condition of the roads they most likely would have died if they hadn’t left.

There are several beautiful lakes in the park, a couple right along the road.  People can swim and boat (no motorized craft) in the lakes and several lakes have campgrounds right on the lake edges.

In 2021 the Dixie Fire, which is the largest in CA history (to date) started about 40 miles away from the national park and much of the national park burned.  It was interesting to see how in many areas the road through the park is the dividing line between what burned and what didn’t.  The fire came really close to the southern Visitor Center and I included a picture showing how close the fire came. 

The town of Chester didn’t burn but as soon as you leave the town limits you can see a lot of burn areas.  W heard there is a town called Greenville near the southern end of the reservoir that wasn’t so lucky, over 200 homes were destroyed and most of the downtown area.  We drove around Lake Almanor and down to Greenville.  The town of Greenville still shows a lot of scars from the fire with lots of burned out brick buildings and empty lots.  They’re busy repairing and rebuilding the town!

Here are pics of the national park and nearby areas:

203-Klamath Falls, OR

Crater Lake 2023

While in Klamath Falls we took a day and drove up to Crater Lake.  We waited for more than a week to get a clear day instead of cloudy, but what we got instead was a smoky day due to fires burning around (but not in) Klamath Falls.

We still had a great time at several overlooks where the lake, the island and the formations at the rim of the lake were visible.  The rim road was not open the whole way around the lake due to road work, so we had to drive one way a little more than half way and then turn around and go back to the main visiters center and then drive the other way for a little more than quarter way and turn around.  It actually worked out good because there are formations that you can only see driving in one direction.  We missed them driving the other direction so if we had been able to circle the rim we would have missed several really cool features of the lake area.

We also took a side drive to a place called Pinnacles where there are many feet of ash that was sculpted by erosion into weird spiky formations.

Even though it was smoky and several pictures just didn’t come out very good. We got several good pictures showing the area.  Here they are:

203-Klamath Falls, OR

Lava Beds National Monument

While staying in Klamath Falls we drove down to the Lava Beds Natl Monument.  It’s a really unique place!  There are several volcano domes that erupted over a period of several thousand years.  It also has a very huge lava flow field and dozens of lava tube caves.

One of the volcano domes that erupted created a large crater that you can walk down into a ways.

Some of the caves are open for exploring.  Most people do self-guided tours of the caves and people are required to have a flashlight and hardhat and sometimes knee-pads and gloves in order to tour caves.  One is lighted and has a paved walkway but several are moderate or difficult – the difficult ones you have to crawl a lot.  Not for me!!  We didn’t do any cave tours because we had Chloe with us and didn’t want to leave her in the truck for any length of time.

There was also a cliffside not far from the lava flow area where ancient people drew lots of petroglyphs.  Unfortunately over the decades lots of settlers and modern people have put graffiti on parts of the wall.  There is a fenced off area now protecting the petroglyphs.

Here are pictures we took: