Camper fun!

We love our trailer!!!

dispersed camping rocks!!! 

another great spot

so cozy!!!

she did the dishes!

Rob does the hard stuff, thank you Rob!!

and it's finally LEVEL!!

another great spot, lake view :-)

Lovely Lakes!

There's still plenty of water in CA!! We've been indulging in lots of beautiful pristine waters up here!

Butte Lake is surrounded on one side by a lava field!

North Fork Feather River

Juniper Lake

Summit Lake

Some camp food highlights :-)

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Rob makes breakfast and we drink fresh ground french press coffee! Rob hooked the grinder up to the car battery!

Steak, fresh corn, brussel sprouts in mustard sauce and gluten bread!

Climbing Volcanoes!

Lassen Volcanic National Park is full of volcanoes &  we've been climbing them!

Mt. Lassen - last erupted 1915!

Mt. Harkness now has a fire lookout on top

Cinder Cone!!

Going to Lassen

Yesterday we all woke up a little earlier than normal out of excitement. We packed up our little trailer and filled up the truck. We left around ten. We drove the whole day through different ghost towns and desserts until we reached the mammoth lakes area. Mom had already had a campground picked out that was free to stay at. We soon realized why. We drove down a one way ten foot wide gravely, dusty road for about a half an hour with our trailer flopping and bumping behind us. We finally reached the campground named deadman creek. We drove around to find a campsite long enough for us. We drove what we thought was a loop until we found it was a dead end with a sign saying "warning! Deep sand! Back up!" As you could probably expect, me and mom were panicking. My dad was cool though and we backed out. We found a site and parked. We emptied ourselves if you know what I mean, than walked around. We found a nice little creek with ten inch blackish green fish. The lava rocks weighed literally nothing. A baseball sized rock weighed as much as a pebble, and the pebbles weighed as much as a twig. We had meat mixture for dinner and conked out. According to mom, I did some verbal drama in my sleep. We woke up around eight and ate an awesome (in my opinion) breakfast with nutella on toast and hot cocoa. We packed up again and left again around ten. Now we are on the road again for another day of driving.

on the road to LVNP

On our way to Lassen Volcanic National park!

Amanda was 5 last time we were there. We're excited to climb volcanoes and kayak lovely lakes. It's about 12 hours from home, so the first night we found camping near Mammoth in an unmaintained forest service campground where camping is free. Google maps took us through some crazy dirt roads to get there and good thing our driver Rob is both capable and intrepid to navigate us there with our trailer!

Anyway, it's great to get away, see some trees, and creeks (yes, there is still water flowing in CA!!) we've even seen some patches of snow and glacier on the highest peaks.

We will have limited connection to technology while on this trip, which will be great for all of us, maybe especially Rob since he works from home and knows what's going on at work 24/7.

I'm grateful for this time to bond with Rob and Amanda and take a break before coming back and diving into work, school and theater again, also for Dane, who offered to take care of all the animals so he could "keep up his bond with them". :-)  I just love these people in my family!

Yesterday, Rob and I were having so much fun listening to Rhapsody and going back into the history of rock and roll....Fleetwood Mac, the Stones, Velvet Underground, and more.....tyring to impress Amanda with how the old rock influences the stuff of today....she complained about it. How can she not appreciate that history lesson and also how cool we are?!?

Gorgeous drive today:

Yosemite falls view from driving into the national park

Yosemite falls. It was so pretty! All thatv water going down!

Were almost there!

On our way to Yosemite on Yosemite highway!