After all that fun at Tahoe it was sadly time to leave...we headed out on the morning of September 27th, 2021. Our first stop for the day was going to be Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California. I had never heard of this NP before, but it was going to be awesome to add another one onto our trip since we were going to be driving through that area to get to I-5 anyways.
Sadly as we were driving we were able to see all the devastation of the California wildfires. We drove through towns that had huge signs up thanking the firefighters for saving their town. We saw SO many burned trees and so much work was being done to clear trees that were damaged and could potentially fall into the road creating a hazard. It was quite sad! The further we drove towards the park I wasn't even sure if the road was going to be open. It seems like we were the only car traveling in that direction and the only ones coming towards us were work crew vehicles.
Thankfully the road wasn't closed going through, but Lassen Volcanic National Park was closed. I was so sad. I do hope that one day we can get back there. Our plan was to do a small hike around Manzanita Lake and it looks so beautiful.
We did end up pulling over at a rest stop and having a picnic lunch, but then we were back on the road.
We headed to our hotel for the night. For the most part I tried to have us stay at Airbnb type situations, but in Redding, CA I was able to find a hotel for us to stay at that could fit all of us in one room. Since it was only for one night and it was pretty inexpensive I went for it.
This is The American Modern Hotel and it's right in downtown Redding and it was really cute. Definitely an old hotel that's been remodeled. The kids were bummed to see there wasn't a pool....it seems like there might have been one at one point in the center area where all the tables & chairs were. Our room was on the second floor back in that corner where the where the buildings meet.
I didn't take any pictures of our room, but I found these online. This was our exact room. This was the area where Michael and I slept and the other kids slept in that other room. There's actually another bed to the left of that bed in that room. It was really nice!
Since we didn't do anything fun on our drive to Redding and it wasn't really all that far from Tahoe we knew we needed to get out of the hotel and do something. We researched a bit online and decided to go check out a local spot.
I had honestly never heard of the Sundial Bridge before but we thought it would be a fun thing to do prior to going to dinner.
There were a lot of people out and about. It wasn't a super warm day, but it was nice to get out and stretch our legs after being in the van for so long.
Enjoying the day!
We walked all the way across to the sundial portion.
Time to head back to the van to go to dinner.
For our whole trip, I tried to plan out where we could potentially stop for dinners. I don't like to wait until you're hungry to decided where you're going to decided where to eat...so I came up with a list of options and we used that and it worked well. When it got to staying in Redding I knew we would go to The Black Bear Diner. The original Black Bear Diner was started in Mt. Shasta, CA which is just a little bit north of where we were. We actually took the kids to Black Bear Diner for the first time on our Disneyland Trip in 2014 in Gilroy, CA. The kids have loved it ever since.
The kids enjoyed it this time as well, but something about my meal was off. I took one bite and it did not settle well. I wasn't sure if it was because I wasn't really hungry in the first place or if it was just all this eating out / junky road trip food was finally catching up with me, but I only ended up eating my salad and a couple bites of my sandwich.
During dinner we must have started talking about Zeke's homemade snow globe where he purposefully put a Made In China sticker on his snowman....because he ended up writing Made In China on the napkin. Either that or we were referencing Covid! :)
After that we went back to the hotel and had some much needed chill time. The kids got to veg out watching TV and Michael and I dinked around on our phones. It was nice after so many days of go go go!
The next morning we packed up and headed out to our next destination!
Lake Shasta Caverns!
I went down to the gift shop to give them our tickets and they told me the tour bus would be along shortly to take us down to the boat launch area.
While we were waiting the kids played around outside. They had this cute little house the kids could climb up inside.
It was build out of the trunk of a tree!
They also had a rock wall and these bears carved out of trees.
The bus showed up and drove us down to the boat launch....she pointed out where the launch used to be when the lake was higher....it's crazy how low it is right now!
All that yellow area used to be under water!
The boat on the right was the one we were taking across the lake to the caverns. The old grey boat was actually a boat from WWII and had bullet holes in it.
Beautiful day to be on the lake!
The ride over was very pleasant. Our tour only had our family plus one other guy on it. So nice!
Enjoying the trip!
When we got to the other side of the lake we got in another bus that drove us up to the cavern entrance. That drive was a bit on the iffy side. Thankfully I sat on the correct side so I just didn't look so I didn't get scared. :)
It was so much bigger and cooler than I thought it was going to be. We entered in the original part of the caverns. They had these nice walkways so you knew where to go. Everything was lit up so nicely! It also wasn't chilly in there like you'd think....because of the humidity it stays at a constant temperature of around 70 degrees.
There were so many fun shapes and textures to take in. Of course you say you're going to remember what each one is called, but come on now....that ain't happening!
For the most part you weren't able to touch the formations we saw in the caverns because the oils from your skin can mess them up. There was this one section though that you could touch...I don't even remember why now...but of course Zeke just had to touch it!
One of the workers or people who discovered the caverns signed their name on the wall. Of course it had faded so they wrote over it so it would be visible again.
I love how all the lighting really accentuated the formations. This ladder used to be the way out of this lower section, but now they have a staircase.
The area we came in below used to be the only area you could see and then by happenstance they discovered this even bigger section. I think it's called the Chandelier Room or something like that. It was massive!
Our tour guide was very helpful and knowledgeable . He was also quirky which I think is a prerequisite to being a tour guide you have to be captivating to do that job and he did not disappoint. The name that he went by was Pinky and he even wore a pink sweatshirt. He told us the whole story behind why his nickname was Pinky and it was because he wore a pink sweat suit in college and the name stuck. He also told us his real name, but none of us came remember now. Pinky was more memorable!
We came out from up higher than we started out so we had to climb down to get back to the tour bus.
We had some beautiful views on our way down!
We took the boat back across the lake and then the bus back to the parking lot and were on our way. It was a fun stop and I'm glad we were able to do it.
We drove up a little bit further north and stopped to get gas and fast food for lunch. This was the best picture I could get of MT. Shasta. It looked so pretty with snow on it! Was chilly there!!
Since we weren't able to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park the day before we decided to make a little detour to make up for it....
Crater Lake!
We actually stopped here on our 2014 Disney Road Trip with the kids, but they all don't remember it so that was another reason we wanted to stop. The funny thing is when we stopped in 2014 it was September 27th and on this trip it was September 28th. Almost exactly the same day 7 years apart. When we stopped the first time it was not snowy at all. In fact here is the same exact image from our stop in 2014.
Crazy how I happen to get the exact same shot....must be the perfect spot to take a picture.
This place is beautiful in the sunshine and beautiful in the snow!
We definitely did not plan for needing clothes for the snow. Not when we were spending the majority of our time in UT, AZ & NV. I ended up changing in the car into leggings with shorts over them.
Michael was still in shorts, but thankfully he changed into something other than just flip flops. It wasn't horrible because we really weren't planning on being outside for very long.
We did walk around a bit trying not get our shoes soaked and I took a few more pictures.
I found another picture that's not exactly like this one, but almost. Too bad I did have the kids stand in front of that rock wall.
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Look at how tiny they were were. Owen was 7 and Zeke was 2 1/2 years old.
Here's another picture of then and now! The color of the water is unlike anything else I've ever seen. It's gorgeous in pictures, but it's even more breathtaking in person. Of course when it's snowy it's not super amazing, but if you've never gone to Crater Lake you need to go!
The first time we came to Crater Lake we weren't able to drive over to the East side because they had the road closed for this big bicycling event. We were totally bummed! Then when we started looking into whether or not we were going to come up here this time it said that the East side most likely would be closed due to ice on the road. That was totally understand, but thankfully they must have plowed it or the weather wasn't as bad as they thought it would be, but it was open so that's all that mattered.
It was fun to get to see the lake from the other side. Yes, I know it's kind of like seeing the backside of water at Disneyland, but now I can say I've been to the East side of Crater Lake.
We were kind of on a time crunch since this was quite a ways out of our way so we didn't drive all the way around.
We went to where we could see Wizard Island and then we backtracked to start heading to Eugene where we were staying for the night.
It was a fun stop and I'm glad we added it. It's my dream one day to bring the kids up here and camp. I want to come during a time when there's a new moon and we can take the kids out to see the Milky Way!
On our drive to Eugene, I started to feel really sick. I think it was a combination of things...the dinner from Black Bear Diner the night before, the lunch from Burger King in MT. Shasta and then all the curvy roads we had to take to get to Eugene.
We stayed at The Best Western New Oregon....it was crazy busy around our hotel. There was a concert going on and the hotel didn't monitor who parks in there lot so we actually had to park where it wasn't a parking place, but thankfully we didn't get in trouble. I was feeling so sick by this point. It was super late so Michael ordered pizza for dinner and had it delivered. When the food came I had to get up and go to the bathroom it smelled so gross. If you know me you know I LOVE pizza so that wasn't a good sign. I took a bath hoping that would help me feel better when it fact I almost ended up passing out and throwing up. I spent the night basically trying not to puke and feeling awful!
Thankfully the last two days of our trip we planned to be less busy and have more relaxation time so I had that to look forward too.
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