Volcano and Treehouse Trip: Day One

We left the house a little before 11 with the goal of making the St Bernard Lodge by 5. We had no traffic trouble at all, even going through SF and Oakland, and actually made it by 4.

We stopped at a roadside park and ate the salad lunches that Mrs Notthat made for us. (We knew The Boy wouldn't eat the leftover salad while we were gone, so we brought it along.)

We also stopped at a scenic overlook and I declared my ownership.

The St Bernard Lodge is a bed and breakfast, but it's not your typical "20 lacy pillows on the bed and cute cat pictures on the wall" sort of B&B. Note the sign in the lower-right about hamburgers.

This is the view from our room.

The lodge has seven rooms. There was only one other couple staying there that first night. Naturally, they were in the room next to ours. (They weren't noisy or anything - actually either they were not speaking to one another or the rooms were better soundproofed than they looked. The floors creaked a lot though, and none of the door knobs could be used without a fair amount of noise.) 

After we checked in we headed out to the Pacific Crest Trail, which is a trail that runs from Canada to Mexico. (We didn't make it quite that far.) 

This whole area is into logging. You see many logging trucks running back and forth on the highway. Many of the forests look fine and healthy, but there are a lot of stumps (some pretty fresh) where trees have been thinned out. Sustainable foresting.

We are pushing the summer season a bit (actually, a lot, as we found out the next day), so most of the informative signs are actually blank and the trails can be difficult to work out since they are covered with leftover winter stuff.

This was the scariest critter we encountered on the walk.

We ate a shockingly unhealthy (but great tasting) dinner at the lodge (Mrs was a bit more healthy than mine - she had shrimp scampi and I had fried chicken and french fries). The breakfast was even more decadent - no plate of dainty pastries, bowl of yogurt,  and sampling of elegant teas; this was a BIG breakfast.

And thus begins day two, to be covered in the next post.

That's it - move along...