charlie's blog

The Volcanoes

Last weekend was a really exciting one. It all started off when Mary won tickets on one of the christian rock stations to a christion rock festival in Quincy, CA. We decided to make a big trip out of it and visit her brother who is working at the fire air attack base in Chester, by Lake Almanor (and Lassen), and then go up to her trailer/cabin up in Sprague River, OR (near Klamath Falls), and then head home. She said it was tradition to go up to Oregon in her truck so we loaded it up and headed out friday night after work.

I recommend the frosty on the east side of town in Quincy, they make a really good hot pastrami. We hit the music festival at 6 or 7. Something didn't seem right though, we were able to park about 10 cars from the main entrance, and there didn't seem to be a lot of people milling around, but maybe that is because none of the big name bands got there till the next day, so we gave it a chance. Boy was it sad. There were 40 bands there, and three stages, with a really nice sound and light setup, but up until the last two bands, over half the audience was other band members. You would walk into the wharehouse where all the smaller groups were playing and there would be 5 people there listening to the music, but you were committed, they had already seen you, so you couldn't just leave, not when you made up a quarter of the audience. I started asking Mary how she won the tickets, the exchance went something like this: (we all know it didn't really, but it was vaguely like this)

me: "so you won the tickets on the radio"
her: "yeah"
me: "so you were like the 12th caller or something?"
her: "well, the third caller actually"
me: "so you just called, and you were the 3rd caller?"
her: "actually, i was the 1st caller, and then the 3rd caller"
me: "hmmm, interesting"

So we went over to stay at Mary's brothers (Fred's) trailer and then went and toured the new air attack base in Chester. It was really cool, they had the places for the tanker (their tanker is still in alaska fighting fires) and the air commanders planes, and the helitack unit who were working out of trailers while the air attack guys had a 2 million dollar facility to work out of, go figure.

We then went up to Lassen and drove around. We originally were going to hike up it, the only problem was that in April they got 182 inches of snow, 150 inches over the average, so our little hike didn't look as fun. We headed back to the music festival to see Nifty Tom 50. (apparently they used to be ska, back when ska was cool, hey, stop laughing, Mary is entitled to her opinion right? but now they aren't) They were okay, some the other bands were pretty cool though. Redcloud rapped about whatever you could hold up (apparently he was there because he was the rapper that didn't swear), Elkland made a pretty good 80's synthesizer sound, one of the groups looked like they were all about 16 and they jumped around a lot, i think mary and i were the only ones watching that show, superchick put on a really good show, they really got into the fact that there weren't many people there and seemed to be enjoying just chilling listening to other bands, which was cool. Just a few weeks ago they had played at Great America in front of a couple thousand people and now they were groving in front of about 80, but it was cool.

But the main event kind of sucked. Mary used to like Audio Adrenaline but she doesn't really anymore, and i didn't really get into them at all. The lead singer kept checking his watch and looked like he was all said that he was playing in front of 100 people and that half the audience was sitting in the bleachers, watching from behind the chain link fence that protects the audience durnig the destruction derby (yes, the main stage was on a dirt race track of sorts. The big fat kid riding around on the golf cart trying to stop the 4 kids from moshing (who i named Bryce) was pretty amusing. Also it was cool that some people in Quincy who normally wouldn't get to see any bands got a neat music festival. I think they should have either lowered the cost ($40) or made it closer to a big city. It also sucks that somebody lost a lot of money on this. Overall, most of the band seemed to appreciate even the small audience and the beautiful area around Quincy and i thought the fact that you could go hang with the bands (because there was nowhere else to go maybe?) was really cool, and for the most part we had a really great time.

We then headed north, we took a weird route up past lassen and on the left side of Lava Beds National Park. We were going to cut over to Medicine Lake and then hit the park from the southwest, but snow got in our way on the dirt road we were following. But what made it all worth it was the drive from the turnoff of highway 89 (or 44, whatever goes from susanville to shasta) up to Doris. We only encountered maybe 5 cars the whole way, and the scenery went from beautiful forest, to almost barren wasteland with scrubby little trees that looked like they were barely staying alive and in the ground, and then this huge hill of almost pure obsidian which we found out later is called little glass mountain, back into beautiful green farmland underneath the watch of shasta. It was a really incredible drive and i don't think either of us can wait to head back that way. I want to see Lava beds national park actually though, maybe tour some of the caves and such. It was really neat getting to see the different types of volcanic activity in northern cali though. Lassen, Shasta, the obsidian mountain, and then later crater lake.

One of the most interesting parts of the trip was Sprague River though. This is a tiny little town of about 60 people east of Klamath falls. It was a beautiful setting for a little town, right in the middle of a valley, with low rolling hills all around, and a little river meandering through the center. What makes it so unique is the people though. Up the road from Mary's place is a guy who run his own radio station. Her next door neighbor worked at Lawrence Livermore on the Cyclotron and the H bomb, and then went on to design all sorts of different concretes for caltrans, and he has an electron microscope in his garage. He seemed like a real hardened man (people had better be careful, i would put a bullet right between his eyes if he comes near my house, but as mary filled me in, he is the one who always sends cards at thanksgiving and stuff, not the lady he is living with, who seems all super nice and grandma ie but is really this die hard activists for research for the mentally handicap and other stuff) They are just and interesting couple is what i am trying to say. The guy got tired of the squirrels stealing the bird seed, so he electrified the roof and base of the bird feeder to keep them away. He said, "people in Sprague River aren't antisocial, it is just that you don't come to Sprague River to meet people." That about summed up the place.

Last but not least Crater Lake, which was beautiful as always. We then headed home, bypassed a big storm, i finally got to see Alturas and now Chuck is in town and we are hanging out and having a good time. Hopefully there are more adventures to follow.

Posted by cmorton at June 25, 2003 03:33 PM | TrackBack