Wednesday, August 10, 2005 � I got up at 5:30AM, made a cup of coffee to take to the river this morning. Got my gear and headed out with the morning light just coming about. I got to the river and splashed my way over rocks and logs to a spot I had my eye on since yesterday. It was a workout getting there, and on my first cast I lost one of the new lures just bought in Burney yesterday. That was a $3.75 cast. So head back to another spot on the river, and cast out three times there with a copper lure. Wham, fish on. This is about a 14 inch Brook Trout. Very pretty fish. Well, that was it for this day. Stayed another couple of hours but finally lost the second lure we had purchased. I had put this Brook on a stringer in the water. When I went to retrieve him for butchering, I found him still full of spunk, so I removed him from the stringer and let�m go to swim another day. Got back to Ol School and cooked up some taters, bacon, and eggs. We�ll be leaving here before long now. We got into Lassen Volcanic National Park about 12:30PM today. Found us a site at Manzanita Lake Campgrounds, which is near the north entrance. We�re at 5,900 feet and the weather�s about perfect. We�re nestled in between tall pines and the sky is clear. We setup Ol School and left for Manzanita Lake. We ended up hiking around the entire perimeter of this lake. That would be 1.6 miles. All level paths � an easy hike. The lake is about 6 inches from the top. It is so clear you can see the bottom from the shore to out to about a 100 feet. There is fishing here but �catch and release� only and fishing here requires using lures having one non-barbed hook. We�ll pass on the fishing here. I doubt Patty wants to buy me more gear to throw away. As we were walking through some trees, we came upon a fawn. We stopped and it passed about 15 feet in front of us. We continued around the lake. The views from the far side of the lake certainly made the hike worthwhile. You can see the crags that Lassen broke away from millions of years ago, and then next to them, Lassen itself. You can see the mouth of the volcano on the tip and it is a remarkable site. After our little walk we came back to camp, had some cashews and a fizzy vodka drink Patty made in the blender with some ice we bought and some frozen juice she brought along with us. Pretty good too. Then we downloaded the pictures we�ve been taking into the computer, and I fell asleep looking at them. I don�t know how long I slept, but it�s 5:00PM now and I get up and see Patty is asleep in the bedroom as well. It�s pretty tough out here I tell you.