Saturday, June 17th: Nevada is not our favorite

Today has been a long and THANKFULLY uneventful drive through the NV desert. No busted tires, no campers coming off the hitch, just a long, boring drive through the desert. Just lots of prisons, casinos, high gas prices and weird brown lakes. I can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t flock to this state.

We didn’t make it quite as far as we hoped last night. But once Zip starts to lose it, we know it’s time to pull over. We pulled into a strange rest area/parking lot with a few pit toilets and a lot of semis. It was right off the highway but we were all so tired we didn’t even notice the sound of vehicles cruising past.

I felt bad dragging everyone out of bed so early, but we wanted to get a good start on our way to Lassen Volcanic National Park in CA. This will be a new park for all of us and we hope to find a spot in one of the dispersed camping areas as campgrounds tend to be booked up over the weekend. Dispersed camping is first come, first served so we’ll see what we find… I’m excited to see some of CA though! It’s a first for me :).

The most interesting thing we’ve seen so far in NV have been these enormous Mormon crickets that have been swarming all over the highway. They can get up to 6 inches long! Abbey is our most daring when it comes to creepy crawlies. I can’t stand the things - they always have a decidedly evil look to them. And ones that bounce unpredictably are especially hateful. They make our little cave crickets back home look pretty innocent.

And then! Just as we were crossing the border into CA, I stopped the audiobook we were listening to to point out the strange expanse of something that looked like a small, roundish desert of flesh colored sand. We all stopped to look closely as we drove by until we all realized with collective horror, it was WATER. It was so horrifying we all wanted to get out and look at it but unfortunately

Tim had just passed the exit that made it possible. Nothing looked alive. No wildlife, people swimming, boaters… but why would you in water like that? We were disgusted. Until we saw an even larger lake the same color about 20 miles further in CA! 62 acre Honey Lake. Glacial fed sinkholes that apparently go dry in the summer. That’s the most I discovered with my spotty service. I found it interesting that within my search for answers there was “how deep is Honey Lake”, “how big is Honey lake” or “how much water is in Honey lake?” but nothing on “why is Honey lake a disgusting flesh color??”

At last we finished up the Great Basin Desert and started heading up into some higher elevations with the beautiful pines and mountain views that we were waiting for. California is gorgeous. Once we got into Lassen National Forest around 3pm we scoped out the first dispersed site on our list, Mud Lake Trailhead right off the PCT (Pacific Coast Trail - the west’s version of the AT). The trail goes right past our site. There’s no water, but there is a pit toilet, which we greatly appreciate. We can use the camper, but it means finding dump stations at points for emptying. We still have our spring water from home that we filled when we left but it’s beginning to run short so today we’ll fill up at the park with several gallon jugs that were tied to the picnic table. Hikers leave things like that behind for others to use on the trail.

A short distance from our site there is a field of wildflowers and a lookout of Mt. Shasta and several other volcanoes. Lassen is not disappointing. Even the disgruntled teen that was not excited to come along said, “I would come back here.” A small moment of victory :).

It was lovely to arrive at a time of day and to a spot worth staying and be able to set up, explore and relax. Instead of the rather frantic pace we’ve been keeping to stay on a schedule that gives us a few weeks in Seldovia and back by August 1. The kids have really enjoyed some space to roam and play. They dug out their carving knives and built a fire and got really, really dirty.

That is one thing you have to completely accept about this type of camping. Everyone and everything is really dirty all the time. I wiped the little kids down with some wet paper towels before they crawled into their sleeping bags tonight but it doesn’t help with that ground in dirt under the nails and in every crease. Dirty dishes may be rinsed with just water and reused. Heck, we’re all family and share the same germs. We go days without showers and I know all of us go days without changing our underwear. I know it may sound disgusting, but after living without running water in Alaska, having 7 children, farm life, and now boon docking, my germaphobe level is somewhere around a 1 out of 100. Lol. It reminds me of growing up with some of my favorite people - my dad’s brother and his family of 6 kids. I was always a little disgusted that their house was not up to my standards of cleanliness as a teen and now here I am probably grossing out teenagers myself! Haha. But I can appreciate now the focus on things you find more important than clean. I’ve discovered it’s possible to get away with quite a bit and remain very, very healthy.