Day 5

On this very day, Josh almost suffered near death by beetle. All we saw was Josh flailing his arms about and screaming his lungs out. Then, Joe flicked the creature off his shirt, and everything was calm.

Before Josh nearly died, we drove to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Joe had scheduled for us to leave early and arrive at 11:00 AM (he should have known better) but we didn’t park the RV until 4:30ish. As you probably have figured out by now, there was a reason we were so late, another technical difficulty with the RV. Two words: flat tire. First, we called the “RV Help Hotline” who sent out a service man to put on the spare tire. Next, the RV Help Hotline lady instructed us to repair the spare. After scouring Redding, California, we came upon a Walmart with a tire center. While it only cost $6.50 to fix, the real cost was two hours of our precious time that could not be spent in Lassen.

A LESSON ON LASSEN:

After a safe arrival at Lassen and a quick eclectic dinner of hotdogs and omelets, we went to a talk on the geology of Lassen Volcanic National Park. We learned there are four types of volcanoes, all of which can be found in Lassen:

• PLUG DOME: made from very viscous magma that gets pushed up and forms a “plug” at the top. Mount Lassen is the largest known plug dome on earth.
• SHEILD: flowing lava like you see in Hawaii—none of us can remember the example in Lassen
• CINDER CONE: A perfectly formed volcanic cone that appears over a relatively short period of time. The Lassen example is called Cinder Cone (creative name, huh). See lots of pictures from Day 7.
• COMPOSISTE: Combines all different kinds of volcanic eruptions over 1000s of years. Mount Shasta and Rainer are examples though we can’t remember the Lassen example of this one either.