3 States in One Day

We spent the night in Klamath Falls, Oregon, hiked at Lava Beds National Monument in California, and then ended up in Reno Nevada. I think we have covered a lot of ground for one day.

For most of the morning and mid afternoon, we spent the day at Lava Beds National Monument. First we hiked up to the fire tower before it got too hot and that was beautiful to look at and see evidence of the lava flows. We also had a great view of Mt. Shasta from the fire tower. It was so awesome to walk around the inside of lava tubes. First of all, it was really dark in the caves. In fact, at one point, we turned off our flashlights just to get a feel for how dark the caves are without light. Then we tried to imagine what it would have been like when the first person explored these caves. One cave we went to was the only one with two entrances so we walked from one side of the tube to the other entrance. The ground was very hard to walk on and full of boulder like rocks so I’m glad I had my two hiking sticks with me. The last cave we went to was the Valentine Cave and it had choices that you had to make which made me kind of nervous. We were afraid of getting lost in the caves so we didn’t go too far in but we stuck to the right wall all the way. A couple of spots caused us to double over in order to get through the passageways.

When we left there we headed to Reno, Nevada. Our original thought was to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park but the most of the roads are still closed due to snow so we decided to head towards Reno. I haven’t been to Reno in over 15 years so I was excited about seeing it again. We arrived into town, got a hotel room, and then went downtown for dinner. We ate at the Cal-Neva casino and had a prime rib dinner for $9.95. Then we stopped for some ice cream before finally returning to the hotel. I was amazed at how empty the casinos and streets are. I don’t know if it is because it’s the middle of the week or if the economy is that bad.