Lassen Volcano had been on our “list” on and off for many months. After all, seeing a volcano when you’ve grown up in the Midwest carries quite an allure. We gassed up Nell and headed off in that direction. By the way, loading our motor home with gas in California is not something a budget should take lightly. I didn’t account for it when I made our monthly budgets last February. The taxation in California is easily $.50 per gallon, and when you load 75 gallons give or take, well, you get the picture.
It is a long RV drive from Bodega to Redding, Ca. The bulk of it can be made on I-5 which is easy traveling, but the getting over the mountains to I-5 is a nerve bender. Along the way but off to the east lies Paradise, the town that was utterly destroyed by wild fire last year. Memories of that tragedy are very fresh among Californians. It was the reason that P,G,and E shut down the electric in the Solano Lake campground when the wind picked up during our stay there. In Paradise, wind had blown a branch on to an electric wire causing it to fall to the ground and spark the fire. No chances will be taken by P,G, and E going forward. Rather than gawk at the embers of that once little town, we stayed our course on I-5.
For reasons that elude me now as I write this we decided not to go to Lassen. It may have been because the campgrounds appeared to be full, or it may have been that the allure of Trinity Alps and the fact that the area lies west of I-5 and in the direction of Chinook campground and Eureka, CA, our next destination. Such is our life now. We sometimes decide to go left instead of right. It’s really interesting when you consider how your life can change simply by a decision to turn left instead of right. It happens every day.
So, Trinity Alps it would be. First, we had to climb some mountains to get over the pass so we could drop down into the valley of Trinity Lake. It’s a bit of a challenge with a 5-6% grade for quite a ways. At the summit of the pass we stopped for a few moments to search Allstays for a campground. Diane, our campground scout, noted Ackerman CG. It looked good on paper. Down the mountain we low-geared it until we reached the turn-off. About ten twisty miles of two-lane later we found it. The camp seemed deserted. It was not actually on Trinity Lake, but laid out hard against the Trinity River that flowed from the dam upstream about a mile. The water had been shut off, the bathrooms closed, no hope of electricity...seemed perfect for us. We had the camp nearly to ourselves save the camp host.
The camp host, a man whose name I will forgo, was a crusty ol’ sort. I met him as he was out cutting wood and pushing back shrubbery from the camp sites. I meet a lot of characters on our Vision Quest. There are a fair amount of individuals out here who are out here precisely because they themselves are “out there”. They more or less have to be out in the wild (out here) because a more urban life would be detrimental to their health...and everyone else’s as well. They’ve tried living a more civilized lifestyle and it just doesn’t work for them. Call them quirky or off-kilter somehow, I just call them characters. Life would be a total bore without them. Characters don’t try to impress you. Characters are stories unto themselves. If you are fortunate enough to gain their trust and they give you glimpses into their lives, you often wonder how the devil they made it this far. You leave them with an indelible impression having been made on your understanding of the human psyche, for better or worse. For me it is so much more satisfying to know that the human makeup of the world is not one smooth asphalt highway laid down on a desert. I prefer the varied scenery. As the poet said, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”.
This little campground was a joy and a great jumping off place for us to investigate the “Alps” in Quicksilver, our Jeep, on daily soirées. At various times during the day a great horn would bellow from the dam and the river’s current would soon gain great momentum and depth as water was released from the dam. I tried my hand at fishing here for to land some trout, but no luck. I was told that this section of the river can be, at times, world-class fishing for trout, but that lately it was very slow. Summer had set in and the fish had become lazy, I suppose. No matter, the Alps are beautiful to explore and hike in. There was always the possibility of seeing a bear, though we saw none. The wildflowers here are amazing this time of year. Diane made a gorgeous bouquet of them and placed them inside the RV for accent. Lovely!
Though we stayed here for four days we didn’t see nearly enough of the area. We find that to be true of many places we visit. We’ll need to return. On our last day here we stopped in at a little local antique shop. We met a charming woman who owned the store and bought some items from here that we thought would be perfect additions to some gifts we are making for Suni and Carrie. One, a wooden bowl painted over white but well-worn so that a lot of the paint was rubbed off and another, a child’s pan for sifting gold nuggets from the river, would make great presentations for the rocks and beans and assorted natural treasures we are assembling for their Christmas gifts. The proprietor, herself another extremely interesting character, had quite the story to tell. The folks she had met herself along the way who had visited her store, her upbringing in the Midwest and how she arrived here 39 years ago, The varied stories of how she had collected some of the things for sale in her store, the stories of the poppies in her garden, kept us entertained for at least an hour. Sometimes you make a left, sometimes you make a right.