We spent Juneteenth weekend at Manzanita Lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park, camped at 5,890 feet under the shadow of Chaos Crags.
Lassen is the quietest of California's national parks, which is part of why we go. You get the volcanic drama without the crowds.
Camp went up the way it always does, with the people who had done it before walking over to the people who had not.
The big day was Kings Creek Falls. It is a staircase of a trail, a couple of miles down through meadow and forest to a wall of falling water, and then the same staircase back up, which is the part nobody warns you about. Every kid made it.
Then we drove up to Lake Helen, and this is the part everyone still talks about. In the middle of June the lake was still rimmed with snow.
So we did what you do. We plunged. The water came straight off the snowpack and it took your breath away in the first half second, and everybody who went in came out shouting.
Then somebody threw a snowball, in June, in short sleeves, and that was the rest of the afternoon.
Evenings were the fire and the stars, and on the last morning we broke camp together and stood in a circle before anyone drove home.
