Another Camp Out

We headed out on another California adventure last weekend. We ended up at Lassen Volcanic National Park. Mt. Lassen is an old volcano that last erupted in 1915. It's about 2 hours northeast of us. Our plan was to make a 2 night camping trip out of the weekend. We wanted to swim, hike, and play in the woods.When we got to the park we didn't realize that we were at about 7,000 feet. Remember, we live in hot Orland which sits at 100 feet above sea level. We got to the park, drove in about 14 miles and found a small campground next to a lake. The weather was cool and the area was nice. We set up camp, ate dinner and roasted marshmallows. A typical camp out. Well we weren't ready for the FREEZING night ahead of us. We thought we were in California where it had been 100 degrees for the last 2 months but no, not there. We froze our butts off. There was even snow in some areas. We were up and down all night long. Rob kept thinking there was a bear in our camp. He didn't want to be "those campers" who left food out and had a visit from a bear in the night so he was checking all night long. Anyways, it was just a rough night, we were all grumpy and we just wanted to go home. We decided to bag the second night of camping, packed up and headed out. We were just going to drive the rest of the park and head home. We had read about a place called Bumpass Hell. It's a thermal area named after a man who fell in the hot spring and lost his leg. YIKES. The hike in is 3 miles round trip. We knew there was no way Andre could ever make that hike and we were so tired a grumpy that we were just going to stop at the area, look at the view, and then leave. When we got there we thought "what the hell." We will probably never come back here and we have come this far so we may as well make the hike in. So we packed up Andre in the baby backpack (thank goodness we had it) and made the 3 mile hike. I packed Andre in and Rob packed him out. We were SO happy we did it. Andre loved the hike. He kept saying "We're hiking!" He was an angel. The area was really cool. There were no rails on the decks which was a little scary. It reminded me of my trips to Yellowstone when I was little. That part of out trip made it all worth it. The weather was nice and cool and we were all just really happy. It was great. By the time we hiked out, Andre was out. All that riding made him exhausted :) We ate lunch, made our way through the rest of the park and headed home. We got lots of great pictures and made lots of memories. It's another trip as a family to add to the list.