Music: Quentin's Trot

I realized that I forgot to announce that Quentin is back in Chicago! My best friend is back and my pack is complete once again.

To celebrate his return, here is a tune that I wrote for him a long time ago. It's a quick and fun little instrumental which I've unofficially called "Quentin's Trot." I think it's quite appropriate in name and sound:

Engaged

Surprise / proposal ring / family heirloom / engaged / happy

Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pt. 7

Last post on Lassen.

The last day: we hiked a bit, ate lunch at Horseshoe Lake, crossed a couple rivers, ambled through the Grassy Swale, and ended up back where we started, Summit Lake.


Trail.


We found an unmarked waterfall along the path. Eric heard it from the path, I checked it out thinking it was just the wind, but then found this little guy. Neat feature: you could jump into the pool in front of the waterfall...


...as my brother shows here.


Kings Creek Meadow. As we drove out of the park, we stopped at a couple places to check out the various views. While taking some landscape photos at this meadow, an osprey suddenly torpedoed into the stream at the right and snagged a fish, all probably no more than 40-50 feet away from us. Craziness. Unfortunately, because it happened so fast, I missed the photo op.


This was the osprey that caught the fish. Although we spent some time waiting around, hoping it would grab another fish, it never really got too close again.


So that's about it for our Lassen trip. Good times.

Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pt. 6

Shortly after climbing up and down the Cinder Cone, we reached our site for the day, Butte Lake. We actually got there ahead of time so we decided to go for the next day's campsite, Snag Lake. We kind of overestimated ourselves and the fatigue made enjoying our surroundings secondary to just finishing the hike.


But we eventually made it to Snag Lake, and it was a great spot. Once again, we were the only people there. Here, Eric is actually standing on the dried lakebed. The shore had receded by 20-30 feet due to the drought.


After relaxing a bit, Eric decided to practice some capoeira. Nice air on a roundhouse.


Meia lua.


The presence of fish was suspected during the day when we watched gulls divebomb into the water to catch them. At dusk, it was confirmed when we saw some trout literally jumping out of the water to feed on the insects that had come out. Eric decided to give it another try.


He fished for quite a while, right to the sunset.


Finally snagging a juvenile rainbow trout after a serious bout of patience. He ended up catching two of these little guys, and snapped a line reeling in a much larger one. It was the classic "big one that got away." My brother was pissed.

Lassen Volcanic National Park, Pt. 5

Does it ever end? Sorry for all the posts, but I'm going through my photos very slowly.


We finally made it to the top of the Cinder Cone. A cinder cone is essentially a volcanic vent that has accumulated debris (cinder) around itself from its eruptions. So the cone is not much more than a pile of chunks of volcanic rock (which is why, as stated in my last post, it was difficult to climb). Although this picture does not provide sufficient perspective to convey the size of this thing, if you open the image up and look closely, you can see two people on the left rear where the two paths meet.


Ok, here's a closer look at them. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how big it was.


You can get a better idea of how deep it was from the opposite side. Eric was excited because it reminded him of the desert pit monster in Star Wars. I agreed.


You could get a nice view of Lassen Peak from here. It is considered an active volcano, albeit dormant, volcano. I was trying to smile here, but it looks more like a painful grimace.


Turning the camera to the left, you got a fucking sweet view. You can really see the incredible variety of terrain. Forests, desert, volcanic rock, lakes, hills, dunes, mountains...



Looking to the right of the above picture are the aptly named Painted Dunes. Absolutely moving, it was one of the more unique sights in Lassen. You can see the trail off to the right which we hiked on. You can see where I took this picture from the last post, it's not too hard to figure out.

Probably just two more posts of Lassen left...