Winter, Is That You??

Lake Tahoe

Leaving Yosemite apparently also meant leaving the warm temperatures behind.

We drove a few hours north to Lake Tahoe, which is on the border of California and Nevada. We spent some time at Nevada beach on the, you guessed it, Nevada side of the lake. Haha!

It was a little windy, but we still enjoyed our time there!

We spent the night in nearby Carson City, Nevada.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

The following day we visited Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California. We were looking forward to this park because it has some geothermal features similar to Yellowstone National Park.

Unfortunately, only a portion of the park was open due to the amount of snow everywhere. They had actually just finished plowing the Volcanic Legacy Scenic Highway, but they have to wait a few days before traffic can use the road, due to an increased risk of snow slides.

Many trails in the park still have several feet of snow on them and were also inaccessible. This included the trail with the most geothermal features. Bummer.

However, we still enjoyed the portions of the park we were able to see. The first area we visited was called Sulphur Works. There were several areas where you could see smoke coming out of the ground and one spot that looked like a hot tub filled with mud!!

The boys really loved this area because it smelled like rotten eggs!! They also really loved that we made them take a picture in front of the smelliest feature at Sulphur Works! Haha!

We continued the drive up the main park road and the temperature continued to drop. By the time we reached the road closure it was 50 degrees! It was also a beautiful drive!

We were able to walk the road a little past the road closure, which afforded us views of the snow pack, a frozen Lake Helen, and Lassen Peak!

Look how much snow was still left in some spots!!!

One of the more impressive sights we have seen on this trip was actually on the way to our hotel that night.

Mt. Shasta! Standing at 14,179 feet, it completely dominates the skyline for miles and miles!!!

Crater Lake National Park

It was a 2-and-a-half-hour drive from our hotel to Crater Lake National Park. Unfortunately, most of this park was inaccessible due to snow as well. We parked in the Rim Village lot and went straight to the main overlook.

While we were looking through the items at the gift shop, we noticed it had started to flurry outside. Thankfully the temperature was warm enough (42 degrees) that we didn’t have to worry about the roads getting covered.

The drive around the rim of Crater Lake is 33 miles. Only 1 mile was open during our visit. We drove to the road closure and took in the view!

There were still a few flurries coming down, but the radar was showing some heavier bands that were headed our way. We stuck around for a little bit and the snow showed up!!!

Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

After a night in Roseburg, Oregon, we made the nearly 4-hour drive to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Continuing with our run of unfortunate weather, here was our amazing view of the mountain.