Dog friendly Lassen Volcanic National Park

We recently did a road trip including visiting the Redwood National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park and Pinnacles National Park with our two dogs. Below I’ll be focusing on our road trip portion to Lassen Volcanic National Park with the dogs, if you want to see more info on this overall trip and other parks click below.

How we got here, our road trip broken down…

Visiting Lassen Volcanic National Park

I was honestly really excited to visit Lassen Volcanic national park, Yellowstone National Park was my favorite place on our last National Park Road trip and hence being called a little Yellowstone how could I not be excited, a similar park but with less people. The many viral instagram videos also got me even more amped up for our visit.

So much so I planned half our trip around this park, we would arrive on a Tuesday, spend Wednesday and Thursday in the park – 2 full days, and on Friday head to our first stop on the way home, Carmel and arrive home Saturday, all taking place near the end of April.

We drove from the Redwoods national park to Lassen volcanic national park which is about a 4 hour drive; note this a twisty drive and while gorgeous may not be best for those that get car sick easily.

While driving it was quite warm out, in the 80s, till we were right near Lassen and then the temperatures suddenly dropped. Then we started seeing snow on the side of the road and as we got closer the higher the snow went. No way we thought. And then we got to our airbnb that was covered in snow, the entire yard was actually covered in snow.

I had bookmarked hikes in my true OCD fashion and did notice that most didn’t have recent reviews but also this isn’t as popular of a national park so it wasn’t that alarming to me – was this an error of mine, quite possibly.

So, suddenly I was worried how much snow would be in the park. A quick Google showed that Lassen Volcanic National Park is open. But, upon more digging I see some facebook posts showing a lot of snow and I read that many trails may be covered in snow. Gulp. The deep diving while sitting our AirBNB began and I soon realized I don’t think we will be going to this park – yes, I just made my husband drive 5 hours here from our last destination.

So I began to look for a back-up plan and we decided that we would go visit the park in the morning and see if it’s actually accessible and then worst case leave and head to Pinnacles National Park – 5 hour south.

Well, upon entering the Lassen Volcanic National Park we were met with a lot of snow, a lot. The ranger informed us this is how it is every single year – something I did not clearly see online and was not mentioned in even one of the viral videos saying to visit this park, ooops. As for the trails? They are open…. if you have snow shoes which we clearly did not and did not come dressed for.

The only road open in April 2023 was half of the parking lot, they didn’t expect the roads to open for a few more months. We were able to visit the visitor center and saw quite a few other people that didn’t know better like us; one was in flipflops and slipping all over. We also saw some snowboarders that were enjoying this ‘open’ but snowy national park.

So while I can’t share my favorite hikes or the beautiful views, I can tell you the parking lot was quite a sight. But double and triple check that Lassen Volcanic National park is actually open to hike and not just to snow shoers before you drive all the way over.

None the less, we had fun, bought a hat, Rossi made some yellow snow in the parking lot. And off we went to Pinnacles National Park.

Here is the nitty gritty of where we stayed, where dogs are allowed in Lassen Volcanic National Parl and what we did during our time at Lassen Volcanic National park!

While I was very excited to see this park, there isn’t much around and I doubt we will be rushing back here anytime soon. I truly hope you get to see more than we did. Onwards to Pinnacles National park with the dogs!