Day 10: Klamath Falls OR - Topaz Lake NV

Today, or at least the first three-quarters of it, was everything yesterday should have been and wasn't.  Though probably not for the chap who had managed to miss a junction completely and jackknife his tanker¹ rig into the ditch just south of Klamath Falls.  Through the woods nearly all the way, in spite of that great sillybollocks Mr Google insisting that the only way from Klamath Falls to Lassen Volcanic National Park was to head all the way down to I-5² then double back on US-89 rather than take the perfectly good and very paved US Forest Service through various bits of, er, forest.  I missed the deer too.  Some terrific views from along there too:

I think this is Mount Shasta

Note insane amount of traffic...

Use your Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a) to spot the three white herons

Trees, California, Friday

Lassen Volcanic National Park may sound familiar to long-term readers - both of you - because I went there in 2014.  Today I went through again in the opposite direction and it was just as good and just as quiet as it was back then.  Some highlights:

Emerald Lake

Mud. Glorious (and boiling) mud.

O RLY?

I do hope this is the owner's hobby and not his nickname

A short bit of road familiar from exactly a year ago soon gave way to more new stuff through more mountains.  Also with bridgey goodness:

But approaching the Donner Pass/Truckee area, things got a bit wonky when a bloke coming in the opposite direction had his wipers on, and Lo! It rained.  Not quite as hard as yesterday but it went on for a hundred miles and confirmed many of my prejudices about Californian drivers.

Thence to Lake Tahoe.  Everyone says how teh Aces Lake Tahoe is but I rather fear I have taken against it in much the same way as I have against Aspen, except that the bits of civilisation around Kings Beach managed to be both twee and tacky at the same time.  As for the lake, it's a lake.  And mostly invisible behind trees, houses, restaurants and rain.  It might look better from the other side, and/or on a nice sunny day, but I ate'nt about to go back and look tomorrow even if the sun does come out.

And so to the final pre-BM night halt.  Fool that I was, I assumed that the postal address of "Gardnerville" meant the place was in Gardnerville but it is not, no, it is twenty miles south of that august metropolis.  Still, I am expecting the view out of my window to be OK tomorrow, assuming it's not raining, because this evening it looked thus:

Topaz Lake

1. Fortunately foodstuffs rather than anything 'splodey.
2. Which would have meant following this sign:

The bleedin' obvious, yesterday