My grandson called today to see if I wanted to explore some territory he’s never seen before. His mother, my daughter, told him that he didn’t even need to ask, just show up because Grandpa loves little road trips.

We headed northwest into the eastern slope of the Mendocino Mountain Range. The east slope is in a rain shadow with some beautiful little valleys tucked in below.

We wanted get up to a fire outlook tower on Eagle Peak, but a tree fell across the access road.

So we decided to hike the 2 miles up to the tower. Some beautiful views of Mount Shasta to the north. Mount Shasta is over 14,000.

On the way up, we saw lots of animal tracks and our heads were on a swivel being in prime mountain lion country.

The fire outlook tower sits on top of this peak. It is no longer operational. It is at 3700 feet above sea level and looks over nearly the entire northern portion of the Great Central Valley of California.

To the east, we see the most southern major peak of the Cascades, Lassen Peak which is over 10,000 feet above sea level.

We got concerned about it getting dark and having to back up the truck a mile down the dirt road with deep ruts and a couple of steep cliffs next to the road, so we decided to come back with a chainsaw someday and drive closer to the tower.

It was an adventure.