We woke this morning to another misty front coming in off of the Pacific. It is one of the things we expected and enjoyed on our PNW trip; I’ll miss it. I’m pretty sure that part of the trip is now over.
Before we completely left town, I had a breakfast date planned for us! I had found another highly rated place in town that had some of our favorite things on the menu. And I absolutely love breakfast as my favorite meal of the day.
Trinidad, CA has a population of 321 but offered two wonderful places to dine. Clearly people must come from far and wide to support this, since I don’t think we saw half the town in these two little restaurants the past couple of days.
Leaving Trinidad and driving down the coast offered us little in the way of a view, but we take lots of great memories with us. Because the times they are a changing!
Our next park destination is Lassen Volcanic. We first drove 3 miserable hours SE through the Shasta-Trinity National Forest areas. This started out to be a beautiful scenic drive but quickly became a chore, despite the scenery. We were winding through the forest, ascending and descending throughout. We started with our lush green vegetation and as we often see, the other side of the ridge was dry and desert-like. This was made much much worse by approximately 8 construction stops, some lasting 15 minutes. OK, there were many areas that were quite beautiful but I’m full blown not feeling well so I had zero patience for it today. I’m grateful that Rick did most of the driving today.
When we got to our planned shopping/lunch stop, the temperature had soared to 93 degrees. Yep, this wasn’t going over well with either of us. But we got the job done, including the first stop at In N Out Burger for Rick’s favorite lunch!
The last hour was much better, and so dynamic. While I will always prefer the green forest to desert, this segment had it all. As we exited the major highway (route 5) for our last 40 miles of the day, we quickly saw volcanic rock lining the road, and this went on for miles. An occasional tree, an even less occasional ranch, lots of dry gulches and clear volcanic damage preventing growth. The last eruptions were over 100 years ago, so the permanent impact in this region is very apparent. However, as we climbed from 400 feet of elevation to our current campsite at nearly 5,000 feet of elevation, we also experienced some lovely pine forests as well.
One thing is for sure, we are in remote land. We will spend the next 3 nights in Mineral CA, population 107. It is about 20 degrees cooler up here, so that will make for some great hiking. We were pleasantly surprised to have some lovely pine shade in the campground to keep us cool. We are less than a half hour from all of the park attractions and look forward to seeing the unique nature of this space. The season here is very short (the road opens mid/late summer by the time all of the snow melts), so we feel privileged to be able to see it all.
Tonight, we rest and recuperate.
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