Day 39: Almost made it to 6. Up for food around 5:45.

Have to immediately start packing as we’re hitting the road today and I’m not coming back to Sam’s house.

It takes a few hours to get everything back in Sam’s car and reorganized to fit the stuff he needs for the next week.

After eating some oatmeal we are on our way a little before 9. Our first stop is Tule Lake Relocation Camp where at one point 18,000 people of Japanese origin were detained during WWII. All of the barracks were repurposed to housing for local farmers and moved off site after the war, but one of the recreation rooms, the top of a guard tower, and the jail are still there.

It is a sobering piece of our history.

Following that visit we stopped at Lulu’s Diner for lunch. They are popular locally for their milkshakes and we got a Raspberry Lemonade that was delicious.

Following lunch we headed for Lava Caves National Monument. There were several lava flows still intact that we were able to walk on.

We even stopped “the Chimneys”, where the lava created vertical tunnels that you could look down.

However, the highlight of the National Monument are the lava tunnels you can walk through.

The first one we stopped at was the Balcony Tunnel, which involved some light crawling. Fortunately, we left our headlamps in the car and could only use one hand to crawl as the other held the phone.

After that we went to the Golden Dome tunnel named for the shimmering gold dust on the ceiling of the tunnel (ok, it wasn’t actual gold dust, and I’m sure I read a sign that explained the phenomenon, but I don’t remember the explanation and it’s more fun to pretend it was gold).

From there we headed to our final destination of the day: Medicine Lake. Campsites were first come, first serve and we were able to find one right by the lake.

After setting up we did a short hike to Glass Lava Flow and scrambled up to the top.

When we got back to camp I fired up the stove to make dinner while Sam took a dip in the lake. We ate on some rocks by the lake and watched the sunset over the lake.

We headed for bed straight away to get ahead on some rest.

Day 40: Up around 5, but lay in my tent until 5:20 because Sam isn’t planning to get up until 6.

I have all my stuff back in the car and am rolling up my tent when he gets out of his.

I boiled some water for my oatmeal and his coffee and by the time I’m finished eating and he’s packed up we are ahead of schedule and on the road before 7.

After dropping Stephen off at his dog sitter we dropped into Burney Falls State Park to see the waterfall. It was really impressive.

From there we picked up some groceries in the town of Burney and stopped at an EV charging station that was in the way to Lassen Volcanic National Park.

But the Tesla charger wouldn’t work with Sam’s Chevy and we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle.

The only charging stations we were in range of were in Redding which was about an hour in the wrong direction. So we were forced to head there. While we waited we tried to buy propane for the Coleman camp stove at multiple stores, but they were all out. We did find a different brand at Dick’s Sporting Goods that the internet told us would work. I was also able to buy a sun shirt that I had envied on the Pacific Crest Trail.

With the car nearly fully charged we finally began the hour drive to Lassen just before 1.

As we were now very short on time, we stayed in the car for most of the 30 mile drive through the park. We did get out to see the Cold Boiling Water trail which was just under 2 miles out and back with a lake at the turnaround point. There were some small bubbles in one section, but other than that it was a normal lake.

There were other trails in the park that would’ve been fun, but we had a lot of driving to do and bypassed them all on the way south.

We stopped to charge the car in the tiny town of Portola and grabbed a few additional groceries at the market across the street. We even had some Indian food for dinner. Without fully knowing what I ate, other than it had tofu and naan, it was quite tasty.

After the car was fully charged we began the drive again and stopped briefly at Lake Tahoe and caught the last hint of daylight.

Following the quick stop we followed the road down the east side of the lake and continued south toward the eastern entrance of Yosemite. We did not have a campsite reserved, but planned to find a site at a National Forest campground just outside the park. At this point we knew we would be after the 10pm quiet time, but were committed.

Another couple hours rolled by and we stopped at our final charging station of the day. By the time we left it was nearly midnight, but we were close.

As expected we found a completely quiet and dark campground, but found an open spot in the middle of two other open spots proving a good buffer against any noise we may make setting up camp. We did our best to not direct our headlights at other tents and were finally able to crawl into our separate tents after 12:30 ending a very long day.