On Sunday, September 15, we spent a classic National Park day in the wild heart of Lassen Volcanic National Park. I love a day when we can rise from our tent and go see some amazingly lovely sights propelled by nothing but our own legs. On the docket for our big hike day in Lassen was an 11.6 mile loop over creeks, around lakes, and into the Park’s designated wilderness.
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Sean and I had wrapped up our auto tour of the Lassen Volcanic National Park Highway by about ten to three on Saturday, September 14. We decided to spend the rest of the day exploring the area around Butte Lake in the northeast corner of the Park, an area that was once a separate National Monument before it was incorporated into the National Park.
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Sean and I arrived at the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center at about a quarter after eleven on the morning of Saturday, September 14. The LEED-certified platinum building only opened in 2008 and was Lassen Volcanic National Park’s first formal visitor center. Our intention was to check out the visitor center and then drive the Park Highway all the way to the northwest entrance at Manzanita Lake, stopping at the interpreted sites along the way.
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Friday, September 13 was a travel day. It was time to strike camp and continue on from Redwood National Park to Lassen Volcanic National Park. But first, we had time for one more morning adventure at Redwood: Fern Canyon, located at the northern end of Davison Road, just a couple miles from the campground. Like the campground, Fern Canyon is in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, part of the patchwork of co-managed state and federal lands that comprises Redwood National and State Parks.
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After having spent the previous day exploring distributed Redwood National and State Parks sites by car, we intended to make Thursday, September 12 the day of our big hike at Redwood. Our destination was the heart of the Redwood Creek area, traveling into the middle of the largest contiguous section of the National Park. From the trailhead, Tall Trees Grove is an 8.3-mile one-way hike, which would make for a long, almost seventeen mile day hike. We doubted we’d make it that far, but we’d make it some portion of that distance. We thought that after the hike we’d head down to Arcata and check out the hot tub cafe that was recommended to us by Ang at the Chicago REI and by our friend Aimee.
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We slept well, and I awoke around 7am in our tent at Gold Bluffs Beach in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. It was September 11, and we had a full day of exploring Redwood National Park ahead of us. It was the third September 11 anniversary that we’d spent in the National Parks after Theodore Roosevelt in 2014 and Bryce Canyon in 2016, and it always felt appropriate.
After our long drive up from San Francisco the day before, we decided not to do our big hike in the Park on this first of two full days. Instead we decided to get the lay of the land and a better sense of how the patchwork of state and federal lands interconnected with private ranches and forests and small communities in the area.
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On Friday, September 6, Sean and I began what was our longest trip since our honeymoon in 2015. The night before, we had quietly toasted at home my final day as Director of Communications at Openlands. After our trip, I’d be starting a new adventure as the founder of Bold Bison Communications and Consulting. We had a lot of packing to do, so we celebrated with a couple drinks and some delivery Brazilian food for dinner. We were both behind on our packing since he’d had to spend a portion of the previous week in Philadelphia for work and I’d been wrapping things at my former employer.
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After our lunch on August 24, Sean, Angela, Mary, and I set off on our afternoon adventures at Indiana Dunes National Park. Since the morning, we had slowly been making our way west from the easternmost point of the Park. Our next stop was the Visitor Center, and then we’d do some more hiking. It was already clear to us that we would not be able to do all the hikes on our list in one day, but we knew we’d be back to this out-our-backdoor Park time and again in the future.
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On August 24, exactly a month after our visit to West Beach, we were back at Indiana Dunes National Park. This time, we were again there as part of our Let’s Go Outside group of mostly Chicagoans who pick places near the city to go for day hikes six times a year. The group had last done Indiana Dunes in July 2015. Four years earlier, we’d run into some issues finding parking, so I suggested to the group via Facebook earlier that week that we try and get an early start. Our plan was to begin at the Park’s far eastern edge, Mount Baldy, and work our way west with a series of short hikes. If people wanted to join us later, they could text and find out where we were. Also, if people needed to get back to the city early, they could peel off whenever they needed to.
Ultimately, there were four of us who explored the Park that day: Sean, Angela, Mary, and me. It was our first time exploring a National Park with Mary!
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In the summer of 2019, after Indiana Dunes became a National Park, Sean and I planned two day trips there. The first trip was on a hot July day with a bunch of my family who were visiting Chicago from both the Detroit area and Seattle. Our choice for the day was West Beach, a unit of the Park that Sean and I had never been to. It boasts both a beach with a bathhouse and lifeguards and some nice hiking trails.
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