he said. she said. a married couple's blog.

We spent the better part of today exploring Mount Lassen National Volcanic Park. Brendan is feeling much better. He had himself quite a large breakfast -- biscuts & gravy, eggs, toast, bacon, potatoes -- that is, once breakfast actually came. It was so slow that I got fed up with waiting and went back to the room to pack.

The park is quite large. We decided to take the 30 mile road that cuts through the western part of it and stopped along the way to see various things. The volcano itself isn't all that active. It last erupted in 1914 - 1921, but it's still got "all the elements" for another eruption. Whatever that means.

The big thing that Brendan wanted to see were the fumeroles and mudpots. We saw some at our first stop at the sulfur springs, but then hiked to what's called Bumpass Hell to see even more. It was actually quite pretty (although smelly). It wasn't too hot of a day either, we were at a decent elevation (7,000 - 8,000 feet) so it was only about 75/80 max at any given point.

We gave some thought initially to hiking to the peak of the volcano, but it's a 5 hour hike round trip, so we decided to skip it. On the way out of the park we stopped to see the rocks thrown and created by the 1914 eruptions.

Then it was back to Sacramento and the airport for our 11pm flight home. We were ahead of schedule by quite a bit so we decided to stop at a casino off the highway. Brendan now thinks that slot machines are my new calling. As soon as we got there, I sat down with $20 and made us $200. Of course, once I do that I'm ready to leave. We stayed around for a while, I spent some of my winnings, and Brendan played BlackJack until it was time to go. We had another small stop back at the Sonic next to the first hotel, "borrowed" their internet access and had Cherry Limeades until it was time to leave for the airport.