Truckee to Lassen (Sunday)
Inexplicably I woke up early in the morning -- before the alarm on my phone went off.I decided instead of trying to force the issue and try to get more sleep I would actually just get up out of bed. I quickly got myself presentable and headed off to get some breakfast. Some eggs and bacon a waffle was what I called breakfast.All the while I was browsing my iPad just catching up with stuff.Then I looked at the weather. It didn't look concerning with a blob to the east of where I'm staying. Hitting the "play" button to animate the radar image I suddenly panicked. I'm used weather going east. Nope. Not today. Today the purple blob was just about to hit Truckee and moving northwest.Shit.I hurriedly gather up my stuff, loaded up my bike and drove off as the first few drops were starting to fall.Picking up some speed I outran the storm! :-DThe drive to Lassen was an entertaining one. Not a lot of people on the road early on a Sunday morning made for a nice ride. Even as I got closer to the national park the traffic stayed light.THe previous night I had scoped out where I was going to stay so finding a campground wasn't hard at all. I was to stay in a non-reservable loop in the South Summit Lake campground. Since I left so early I wasn't at all concerned with finding a spot.And I found a perfect one.I set up my site early and commenced chilling well before 2 PM. :-DWhat got me even happier was when I said "hi" to someone walking by..."I'm just looking to see where I can pull in my big rig...""This is a tent only loop.""Thanks.":-)Yep... no fucking generators tonight! I can actually hear the sounds of nature!My camp site already had a pile of dead wood lying by the fire ring. It was too big, so my saw came in handy to resize the logs to be fuel-sized. Nice.I built a quick and relatively low fire to add some warmth to the quickly chilling evening. Boiling some water for the freeze-dried dinner took no time (well, five minutes). While the bag was rehydrating I fed the fire to grow it from kindling to bigger logs.I sat there reading by the fire sipping a bit of Scotch until I started to hear peels of thunder from behind me. I took that as the signal for me to put out the fire and crawl into my sleeping bag to finish the chapter.The next morning was warm, dry, and sunny. Another perfect morning on this trip.