Drive to Shingletown, CA
We started from Bay Area on Thursday around 2:30 pm and picked up kids early from school.We did a pit stop at Starbucks about half way through and then drove straight to our airBnB. The drive was relatively uneventful, and thankfully kids were not cranky. We reached the airBnb around 8:00 PM in the night.
The airbnb had a 5 bedroom - 2 bath configuration, and all the rooms were spacious with a cozy cabin vibe. The kitchen had all the utensils, and the bedrooms had enough linen. This place was surrounded with woods! The owner was nice enough to come in, when we checked in, and help us with setting up the fire which literally is the sole way to heat up the entire home. With a lovely fire set up, we had our pre-ordered mylapore express curry and chapathy for dinner, chatted for a while, and called it a day after a quick game of cards.
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| First pic of the trip |
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| Start of our stay with wine! |
Day 1 : Lassen National Park
Everyone woke up sometime between 7:30 and 8 AM and the first task that Sree did was to start the fire. After some chats over coffee and a yummy breakfast of pancakes and cheese toast and eggs, the adults got ready, while the kids explored the nearby woods around the house.
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| Kids exploring the woods around the AirBnb |
In our research of Lassen, we realized that a big chunk of Lassen was still closed due to Dixie fires. Manzenita lake was open, along with sulphur springs and Lassen peak. So we decided to explore this area today.
We got out around 10:30 AM to Manzenita lake and took a wonderful stroll around the lake. This also involved taking multiple pics around the lake too :). This was a 2 mile hike, and by the end of it, the kids were pretty hungry and tired. We had carried sambhar rice and pasta with us. We had an amazing picnic lunch by the lake. So thankful for all the efforts put into making sambhar rice and pasta in the morning and carrying with us. After a wonderful lunch, we started back.We did a pit stop at home for a restroom break and started off again to see Lassen Peak and the Sulphur Springs. We saw a little of the sulphur springs. Initially, we had a plan to hike one of the trails near by, which we decided not to, due to the time constraints. We also stopped by two other lakes - Emerald lake and one more, which I am unable to recollect and captured some pics. Dwarak was teaching us how to throw stones and create multiple ripples in the lake, which I failed miserably at replicating.
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| Lake Manzenita! |
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| Yummy Sambhar Rice |
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| Kids enjoying their picnic lunch |
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| Sulphur Springs |
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| Emerald Lake |
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| Lassen Peak |
We also took multiple fun snaps around Lassen peak and started back home around 6 PM.
We had a nice dinner of dal and rice and the girls decided to go do some star gazing at Manzenita lake. Around 9:00 PM, we drove off to the lake area. It did feel a little creepy to walk to the lake in the darkness. We sat near the lake, where we had picnic in the morning, and looked up at the stars for a while.The moon was out, so I think we missed out on some, but it was still beautiful to see the stars out with pitch darkness all around.We came back in 45 minutes or so, chatted for a while around the fireplace and called it a day again.
The kids were all fast asleep, and so was Sree.
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| Star gazing |
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| Darkness around us |
Day 2 : Shasta
Next morning, again after coffee chats, and yummy breakfast of avocado toast, and eggs we started to Shasta for Kayaking trip. We went to one of the Kayak rental places near Sacramento river. We got about 9 Kayaks. 3 of which were tandem, which the younger kids went with an adult, and the rest of the folks did solo.This was really fun for all the people. We spent about an hour kayaking. After this, everyone was super hungry, and we went to a Mexican restaurant near the Sacremento river area to have food. Well I think we all ate the food, but the flavors were not the best and we had varied opinions regarding this place.
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| Morning hot chocolate! |
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| Group Pic for Kayaking! |
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| As we waited for food |
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| You can figure out the restaurant name here? |
Around 3 pm, we started to Shasta Mountain. We thought we would do couple of water falls, but decided to do the heart lake hike. We started the hike around 4:30 pm. The hike started fine, and it was just 1.2 miles, but it was mentioned to be steep. We walked tagging along the kids.We lost our way a bit, so it added a bit more to the hike. But all of us climbed, and I think was racing against time, as we had kids with us. In the end, almost towards the end of the hike, as the sun was setting, we turned back to get the kids down safely. A few of us went up the quick stretch to see what’s at the end and came down and joined the rest. By the time we reached the trailhead, it was 6:30 PM. Tired and exhausted we just wanted to reach home and relax.
We reached home, had again a yummy dinner of Ediyappam and Kuruma, dal and rice, chatted again into the night. Lots of conversations :)
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| Start of the Shasta mountain trail |
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| End of Heart Lake hike |
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| Beautiful view of Shasta mountain |
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| Exhausting day, but lovely dinner |
Day 3 : Burney Falls
We all woke up late today, and a few of us, started to Burney falls. The kids - Deshna and Tara wanted to stay back, so Dwarak ended up staying back, and Sree had already decided he wanted to stay back to take it a bit slow.The drive was so good and we were able to see so many fall colors everywhere.We reached the falls at 12 PM or so. The falls was spectacular this time. This was my second time visiting Burney falls, and I enjoyed this time so much more than the first time. Additionally the others enjoyed it a lot too because, Me and Sree had really brought down their expectation elaborating on our past experience here. The last time we visited the falls, we had a decent experience, but we were unable to enjoy it fully due to a tiring drive and the heat.We did the falls loop trail which is an easy 1.2 mile loop. We spent a lot of time on the rocks taking pics and enjoying the mist. The weather was perfect too. We completed the falls loop trail in about an hour and drove back home to some yummy food of dal, plantain fry, and stew which Sree had prepared.
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First view of the falls
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| PC : @Vijay Rangarajan |
Posing with the falls
Bridges we crossed
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| At home, the girls were having fun! |
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| Dwarak and the girls! |
After lunch, we watched the movie thalaivi, and made Tacos for dinner.
It was nice to relax and watch a movie, and I felt Kangana Ranaut did a fine job. The movie I felt dragged a bit in the beginning though, but picked up towards the end. Also we all talked about Tamil Nadu politics as part of watching this movie. I have never been familiar with this, so it was interesting to listen to this.
After dinner, we decided to do s’mores, when it started snowing! This was a highlight, as I had not seen snow for a long time. We went out and stood in the snow for a while. Took pics. After coming inside happy and elated, we all had yummy s’mores, and played a game of Exploding Kittens. After this, we thought we will do a last minute dance and adults and kids enjoyed some dancing fun. Today being the last day, we chatted for a while again and settled in.
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| Enjoying the snow fall |
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| Game of Exploding kittens |
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| Dwarak competing with the kids |
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| Yummy Tacos! |
Day 4 : Drive back
When we woke up, the whole place was covered with snow, and we did not have electricity or water! This was unexpected! We caught whatever water we had, and used it for restrooms for all. We packed in the dark, and quickly loaded the cars. We took some family pics in the snow while the children played. This felt like white christmas for me, which mostly I have only seen in movies.
Our drive back was uneventful, and we just did two quick stops for gas and coffee at Starbucks and reached home. All of us decided on driving straight home with individual plans, as it was difficult to coordinate during the route. We came back to Komala Vilas food which I door-dashed. This is our usual tradition.Also, the snow was only in the shingletown area, and the moment we drove out of that area, it was just normal roads. So we were not delayed in any way.
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| So excited to see this in the morning! |
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| Pappu enjoying making snow wings! |
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| Our lovely airbnb |
This trip was a wonderful break, and what would always remain in my memory are the cozying up in the morning to morning coffee, the long chats into the night, the yummy breakfasts (breakfasts taste much better during holidays), posing for all the wonderful pics and also taking some funny funs, kayaking, the unexpected snow and packing in the dark on the last day! Also how can I forget, the wonderful company of our friends Divya, Dwarak, Harini and Vijay.
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