Lassen Volcanic National Park

Where do I start about Lassen Volcanic? I'd never heard of it before this project... and this, like Kings Canyon, is another sleeper hit of the National Park system. Lassen is gorgeous and we didn't even see half of it. Not because the park was big, but because it was half on fire.

Lassen was closed between Summit Lake and Manzanita Lake due to the Reading Fire. Still, that didn't deter us at all - we were counting on the park service to keep us safe. We still saw a lot and look forward to exploring more. Again, this is a park where a lot of the beauty exists in the back country, but  there's plenty for the road-tripper to see.

  

     

There are pinnacles, looking left over from the times that Lassen was a volcano. Actually, it still is. Lassen has been a national park since 1916, about 2 years after its eruption. Lassen Volcanic boasts a whole range of landscape and flora and fauna. We didn't get to see the Painted Dunes or the Cinder Cone, but we did get to see a bunch of geothermal areas including Bumpass Hell.

  

You could barely see the smoke from the fires:





There were flowers EVERYWHERE - meadows and meadows of fragrant purple flowers:

     

We found snow, at 80 degrees:



And beautiful lakes:



We even stalked a very shy marmot - who had been roadside, but fled when we backed up. We waited for what seemed like forever - but he posed eventually.

  

There's plenty more pictures here that you should check out. This is only a smattering of the beauty that is Lassen Volcanic.

I'm definitely looking forward to returning!

Also the closest we got a wildfire, Constantia Wildfire: