The Trip home

On the way home from the Redwoods we stopped in Lassen Volcanic National Park. It reminded me of Yellowstone a little bit. There were many hikes, beautiful rivers and lakes and geo thermal areas to look at. They even had geysers although we didn't see any. We went to the visitors center - stamped our passport books and looked on the maps for a good hike. Taylor saw a picture of volcanic cone that really caught his eye. He came and found me and showed it to me and asked if we could go see it. It was one of the hikes that we though would be doable for us -about 3 miles. Well it was on the other side of the park, but on our way so we headed over there. About 20 miles after leaving the visitors center we realized we were running out of gas. The dilemma was there was a gas station at the visitors center and then one about 60 miles down the road. We didn't really want to run out but weren't' sure we could make it. We decided to press our luck, so we turned off the air conditioning (not so fun) and drove 55mph (also not to fun when we could have gone 70) and hoped for the best. We did make it with a gallon to spare.

The cinder cone hike was quite nice. We walked for about 1 mile on a flat path in a nicely wooded area. It was a nice hike except for the fact that Rachel wanted carried, Ryan had to poop, Taylor and Dallin had run ahead so I was a bit worried about them, and Anna refused to wear her tennis shoes, and it was quite hot. The shoe situation wasn't too great for the youngest three. Somehow Rachel and Ryan both hit a growth spurt recently because I couldn't get the tennis shoes I had brought for them on their feet. They fit fine a month ago. So Ryan spent the week in sandals and Rachel was either barefoot or wore Anna's extra flip flops. But despite all that I was enjoying the walk at least when I wasn't carrying Rachel.

Then we came around a corner and saw the cone. I think my mouth dropped open. It was a big black hill of sand and rock without a tree growing on it. There was one steep path straight up the side of the mountain. It looked long, it looked steep, and it was hot-you could almost see the heat waves coming off of it. We were really low on water too so I had been trying to conserve by not drinking any but I was really thirsty and feeling a tiny bit light headed at this point so I thought there was no way we were all making it up the mountain. Rick maybe, the older boys maybe, but definitely not Anna, Ryan, Rachel and preferably not me. But we trudged on.

I decided to get to the base of the mountain and see what we could do. I told the kids-just keep on keeping on. We tried singing songs, telling stories and reciting the ABC's to take our minds off the misery. By this time we were really thirsty. Rick and Ryan had fallen behind (they had to stop for Ryan to poop) I was worried about them making it since I had the backpack with all the water. I wasn't sure what to do. I knew that if we stopped to wait for them I wouldn't want to start again. Best to just keep going. So I sent a bottle of water down with a passing couple, pointed out Rick and ask them to give it to him.

We set a goal of how far to walk before stopping to rest. We looked for rocks that stood out or other landmarks to make it to before we'd pause for a break, I alternated carrying Rachel and making her walk. When the landmarks got to far apart for us we counted our steps. 15 steps then a break, 10 steps then sit down. We finally rounded a corner and leveled off. The top was beautiful. On the way up I asked a guy if it was worth it. He nodded, and said- it is nothing like I've ever seen before. If you can get up there- do it. He was right it was pretty amazing. The pictures don't really do it justice, which is often the case. Looking around you got a great view of many different landscapes.

On one side was a beautiful bright blue lake, that gave way to a geothermal area that looked liked painted sand, around the other side was volcanic rocks all bordered by green forests. We walked around taking it all in. Taylor and Dallin were up there, they had actually hiked down inside the cone. I decided looking down into it was good enough for me. When Rick and Ryan topped the hill they started coming over to us but Rick hesitated and started yelling at the kids to sit down. I couldn't really figure out why at first, then I realized he was nervous because it looked like the side dropped off on both sides. It wasn't like there were cliffs or anything. I didn't think there were safety issues at all - but then again I am not scared of heights and lets just say Rick prefers the ground. Anyway we took pictures and drank all the water we could salvage from the bags of ice we had in our backpack to keep our stuff cool and then made our way down

. By the time we got back to the car we were hot, hungry and very thirsty. We then again had to face about 40 more miles till we got in to town where we could get gas. It was a miserable ride without the air conditioning but we made it. It was already early evening by then and we weren't more than 1 hour or so into the days drive. In fact we had originally hoped to get home that night but had long ago abandoned that idea. We decided to push on hard and just see how far we could get. About 10:00 we were faced with a decision either stop in Winnamucca about 11:00 or drive to Elko 2 more hours down the road. We really wanted to get to Elko but neither or us wanted to drive 2 more blocks let alone 2 more hours - yet we pushed on, partly because hotels in Elko were cheaper then Winnamuccua (we were really lucky that mom and Kevin were so willing to book hotels and try priceline for us while we were driving).

We made it into our hotel a little before 1am. We crashed for the night. Kevin found a local ward that met at 9:00 for us to attend. It was quite the trial to get out of bed that morning. Especially because we had planned to be home by Sunday and had buried our church clothes at the very bottom of our car top carrier. Getting them out was a trick. I couldn't find all of our church shoes so most of us just went in our flip flops and sandals. Rachel went barefoot. We were also out of food by this point and unfortunately this was the only hotel we stayed in that did not have a continental breakfast. I found a couple of oatmeal packets and cooked some in the cups in the hotel room. We had 2 forks to share. Most of the kids actually turned their nose up and lukewarm thick oatmeal and went to church hungry but maybe they were too tired to care. We were really wrinkled just a bit smelly and very tired but we make it to church during the opening song. It was actually a very nice Sacrament meeting, we were impressed with there speakers and especially their youth. We skipped out on primary and headed for home.

We forged on only stopping for gas. I kind of thought we would have to stop for lunch but we did have some fruit snacks and peanut butter bars and a case of diet Pepsi we made work for us. We pulled in our driveway about 4 hours later, dirty, tired and hungry but glad to be home. It was an amazing trip I would do again in a heartbeat. I just wish it wasn't 15 hours away.