Road Trip 2015 Day 2 – Red Bluff to Klamath Falls

Day 2

Mileage – 274.4 miles

We left Red Bluff at the crack of 10:30 and headed off to Lassen Volcanic National Park. To assist us with this I plugged the destination into my phone’s navigation app, pushed start and began to follow it’s guidance. Things were going great, we were following the directions, enjoying the scenery, and just having a great time. Until I noticed that the next direction it was asking us to follow would have had us turning off way to early. So I did what I normally do and just ignored it until it could sort itself out. For a time the Nav just kept trying to get us to turn around and after we ignored it for a few more times it’s personality seem to change. It’s next direction to turn, if we had followed it blindly, would have had us driving into the middle of a large field, after going down a short steep embankment. When that turn didn’t get us it’s next instruction would have had us drive right off the side of the mountain!! After that, I shut the Navigation off and we went low tech and pulled out the atlas for awhile.

As we continued on to the park, we both reveled in the beauty that surrounded us. We were blessed with very little traffic and therefore we were able to just enjoy the drive. The highway was lined with tall pine trees and with the top down on the mustang we were able to enjoy the openness and clean fresh air. This was exactly what I was hoping for on the road trip!

As we entered the park without having to pay, thanks to our shiny new annual pass, we pulled into the visitor center, grabbed our gear and headed on in. As we walked through the door one of the rangers mentioned that a video had just started in the auditorium and we could catch it if we went in. So we did and I had an instant flashback to my youth. I could remember my folks dragging me and my siblings into these at each and every national park we ever went to. The video covered the formation of Lassen and was mostly interesting for many of the older pictures that they used.

When the video finished we headed off to see the park. And for that I think I will let some of the pictures speak for us.

Wish we had had a little more sunshine; but overall the park was as wonderful as I remembered it.

From here we were off to Lava Beds National Monument, home of the Modoc Indians and lots of lava tubes. My plan had been to go in through the southern entrance and drive through the park so that Helen would have a chance to see the land of our kids 4th grade Indian village project. That was the plan.

Unfortunately the road was closed and we couldn’t go in that way. So we gave up and just headed on in to Klamath Falls and the Olympic Inn. Our highlight for here was finding a Subway sandwich shop that had Gluten Free Bread!!  So after gorging myself on a couple of sandwiches we curled up and called it a night so that we would be ready for tomorrows trip to Crater Lake.