Cold. Wet. Rainy. Foggy. Cloudy. Cold.

Drove up Wednesday. Tried fishing some of the very small creeks around our campsite. No luck. Built a roaring fire to fend off the wet cold. Bundled up and spent the night shivering in our tent. 30 degrees. Ice on the ground in the morning.

No fishing? Colder than a well digger’s ass? Too foggy and cloudy to see any of the spectacular views Lassen is known for? We’re out.

Drove over to my favorite fishin’ spots near Lake Almanor. Kept 8 trout and drove to all the way down highway 89 to Truckee.

Highway 89. This is one of the most beautiful highways I’ve ever driven. It starts way up by Mount Shasta and winds through the southern Cascades and northern Sierra Nevada, through Lassen Volcanic National Park and Lake Almanor and Quincy and Truckee and Lake Tahoe and finally ends up near Lake Topaz on 395 near the California-Nevada border. You get the the wide range of California alpine scenery–the volcanic rock formations of the Cascades, the high Sierra white granite, various rivers and creeks, pine trees and oaks and aspens, craggy eastern Sierra barren rocks, and so on. The area between Lake Almanor and Truckee on highway 89 is particularly nice and filled with plenty of places to camp and fish. This is an area that I’d like to explore a lot more in the future.

Ahhh, Truckee… a nice, warm, dry cabin awaits us. We cranked up the heat and built a fire in the hearth, ate grilled trout with lemon, and went to bed early. Slept easily and peacefully in our warm and comfortable bed.

This morning we drove home, stopping by Grass Valley just because, and Auburn to look at houses and dream about living there.

Here’s a few pics of Lassen. Just a few.