Lassen Volcanic National Park

We spend one of our day offs going to Lassen Volcanic National Park with some of our friends from the school. It's like an hour drive from Redding. This Lassen is one of the oldest national parks in the United States.

I said to park's worker that this Lassen is a Finnish man's name and the worker explained that the park has gotten its name after Danish guy who traveled in this region back in the days. So that's why the name Lassen. (Actually he didn't understand my pronunciation first, because they say Lassen like we say Lässen ;D)







The altitude was over 8000 feet (2,5 km) so you can imagine that the view was breathtakingly beautiful! There was already little bit snow here and there and the weather was chilly.

In this park there is so many things to see but this time we decided to take a three mile hiking trip to go and see Bumpass Hell. It is the largest hydro thermal area in the park.

This Bumpass Hell, small hot springs valley was interesting. There was many hot springs and you could see the water steaming and boiling all around the valley. But the smell was awful because of the sulfur. It smelled like rotten eggs! Yak!!

The largest fumarole (geologists can explain what it is! I don't try!!) in this park is called a Big Boiler and it is the one of the hottest fumaroles in the world! They have measured the temperature has been as high as 332 ' F (161 'C)!! So you don't want to take a bath there!!

The area was named after an early settler who fallen into a boiling pool and burned leg so badly that he was forced to amputate his leg.

Eelis was also hiking :) Mainly he was sleeping in a baby carrier but when he woke up he so wanted to see what's going on. He did find his way to do this but I think this position is not so official carrying position! :D

On this area there is a lot of mountain lions and bears. Luckily or not we didn't see any of those even though some of our friends wanted to see and even prayed for that. Perhaps the prayers didn't work because some of us really prayed against this prayer!! ;D But we saw some small cute-looking hamsters or squirrels or what ever. I don't know what they were but they were funny  :)