And the Award for Most Isolated Campground Goes To...Butte Lake

Just before arriving at the turn off for Butte Lake campground (in the Lassen Volcanic National Park), I mentioned to Hubby that we had a six mile rough gravel road before us. He was thrilled. It was another bone-shaking, teeth- jarring experience that surpassed the previous winner of the wreck-the-RV competition in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

After crawling along at 15 miles per hour, we finally arrived. No ranger in the ranger station and, indeed, hardly anyone in the campground. Butte Lake has over 100 sites. I reckon about 10 of them were filled this weekend; and in our loop, we were the only people. It was actually a bit weird. It was super quiet. We couldn't see or hear any people, tents or vehicles from our site, so the net effect was that we had a rather splendid campsite with as many bear-proof food lockers and picnic benches as you could desire. We also had the toilet block to ourselves. The “beware the bears” signs were much fiercer in this campground – you are instructed not to leave any food around unattended for even a few minutes – so by bedtime on Saturday I was quite freaked out by the atmosphere. And, once again, the kids insisted that we lock them into the RV for safety after they’d gone to bed.

It’s clear that next weekend (Labor Day weekend) the atmosphere will be very different: Every camp site is reserved. It will be heaving here. Butte Lake itself is a very short walk from our site, and is lovely, though rather buggy.

Ironically, while this place was easily the dirtiest we’ve been to on this trip, the campground did not have any showers. The place is situated on grey powdery volcanic cinders. There is very little grass, though plenty of trees (Ponderosa pine mainly) providing pleasant shade. But you do get very dusty and grey whenever and wherever you walk outside (and that’s even before the huge fires constructed by Hubby and Deep Thought start to blow their smoke over you). Little Starlet only had to look at the ground and she was black from head to foot.