Lassen Volcanic National Park - Part One
This past weekend I had the great pleasure of visiting Lassen Volcanic National Park! I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time and I absolutely loved it! It’s a beautiful Park! I could totally see myself going back some day to explore more!
I’m bummed that the “Bumpass Hell” trails were closed at this time, but my family found plenty of other things to explore!
The drive through the park is real pretty and only takes about an hour without stops. Naturally we wanted to stop and explore though! Since Bumpass was closed, our first stop after the visitor’s center, was “Sulphur Works”.
Sulphur Works is a hydrothermal area right next to the road! There was a giant steaming, boiling, sulphuric mud pit! I could feel the intense heat on my legs while standing on the sidewalk! After visiting the smelly area my youngest announced, “Ugh! I never want to eat eggs again!” Yep, sulphur smells like rotten eggs!
Lassen Peak looks pretty cool! Do you see the “Eye”? You can hike up (it takes several hours), but we didn’t.
Lassen Volcanic Park contains all FOUR types of volcanos! You will see the volcano we did hike in another post!
The “Bumpass Hell” parking lot was still open even though the trails were closed. Where does that name come from you might ask? It’s a rather grizzly tale of a man named Bumpass who met a nasty fate. I’ll let you discover the full story on your own.
Anyway… we were able to see a really cool boulder and some seismic equipment there.
There are many beautiful lakes to see as you drive! Lake Helen is a beautiful deep blue! When all is calm you can see reflections of nearby Lassen Peak within.
This famous impressive boulder is right next to the road. “Hot Rock” landed there in the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak.
We ended up at Manzanita Lake where there is a museum and gift store. The museum portion was closed due to Covid unfortunately. We did a little hiking around the area but it was getting too hot for us to hike very far.
