Volcano tales

I never got around to continuing the post from last month's Redding trip, so here goes..

That weekend we went to see the new bridge, we also made a lot of side trips. I love driving but don't really like repeating a trip once I've been there especially if it means driving more than 4 hours by car one way. It's a trait I had probably inherited from my Dad. I remember when we used to live in Mexico, where my Dad was assigned, we'd make weekend trips to visit different places which required all of us to be expeditious, quick and constantly alert (lest we get left behind) as he likes to cover a lot of ground in one day.

But I digress.

Here are the pictures. We took lots of pics but most of them I am on it, so can't post those, it just ruins the views (haha)...

Mt Shasta, taken after our cave tours, this is the closest we've come to this mountain, we were running against dusk because we needed to still find our hotel for the night. At the foot of the mountain is this quaint town which reminded me of the movie Dante's peak for Mt. Shasta is a volcano after all.

Mt Lassen -- it looks pretty similar to Mt Shasta, in fact I had a hard time distinguishing them from each other. We decided to do this side trip because it's nearby and I figured we can swing it on our way home. Guess what? to go there means having to drive all the way up to get to the other side that will lead us to the freeway to get back home. It's a good thing we had the entire day to spare and the drive thru it was well worth the time. Although not comparable to the grandeur of Yosemite, it has its own beauty and endearing characteristic that will make you connect back to pure nature. This is mountain is another volcano that last erupted in 1917. See why they call California earthquake zone?

The pine trees are so much different from the ones I've seen here around SF and they are so packed like crayons in a box. I've noticed that the formation of the trees looked like they were lined in neat rows and arranged to have an illusion like they've been planted in an alternating pattern when seen from afar. Here we are trying to stop every so often thinking we will not get a better view of the mountain for a good pic and not knowing we were actually going to climb the 8,000 of the more than 10k foot mountain!

A jab at a picturesque shot from a photographer wanna be

The rivers are prestine and super chilled!!! You would think the water is good enough to drink---naaah--wouldn't dare it.

We found another river and went down actually to put our feet in----brrrrr--- not such a good idea to do for so long, my feet almost turned blue in just under 10 seconds. Would probably be good to white water raft in it though..

It's called Castle Crags, on our way to Mt Lassen. They are granite peaks that jutted out of the mountains a million years ago. Kitchen counter material galore? *haha*

I forgot the name of this lake but right now I call it the Crystal lake. Somewhat similar to the one in Yosemite (Tuolumne) but smaller. Visitors get to picnic or set up camp around the lake. Nice!

On the mountain, climbing up to get to the other side...Our first glimpse of the packed snow we thought was hardened ice. I was wrong, one can make snow cone from it, just need the syrup to go with it.

A view from the top! It feels like we were on top of the world and we were kind of feeling dizzy from the altitude. The air is quite thin up here at 8k feet but the view is just breathtaking, you now wonder which one is causing this to happen. Do you also call it the bends when one has climbed such altitude so quick? haha

We went to the edge of the mountain and saw a lone deer below. My hubby zoomed in for this pic of wildlife in the park.

I love taking pictures of trees especially when they're way so high!

I told you I love taking pictures of trees. Nature is my stress reliever.

Copyright 2004 Wandertrekker