The mudpot exploded about three feet from my right hiking boot, and my first thought wasn't “that’s cool” – it was “please don’t let that be boiling.”

My partner, Alex, ducked behind a twisted pine tree and yelled, “Is your face okay?” A blob of gray mud had landed on my hat brim. It sizzled. I took the hat off and watched it steam.

We were standing on the Bumpass Hell boardwalk in Lassen Volcanic National Park, and there was exactly one other human being within eyesight – a ranger who looked bored out of her skull. Compare that to Yellowstone’s boardwalks, where you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with people holding selfie sticks over thermal features.

The entrance fee here is $30 per vehicle for seven days. Yellowstone charges $35. That five dollars isn’t the point. The point is Lassen got 400,000 visitors last year. Yellowstone got over four million. You do the math on elbow room.

We drove up from Sacramento in a rental car – $45 per day split two ways. Gas from the Bay Area to the park’s northwest entrance cost us about $60 round trip. The nearest town, Red Bluff, has motels for $75 a night in summer. We paid $90 for a room with two beds and a mini-fridge that hummed like a chainsaw.

A ranger at the Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center looked at our map and said, “Most people drive through in four hours.” She circled a spot called the Cinder Cone. “Those people miss this.”

The Cinder Cone is a volcanic ash hill that looks like Mordor’s little cousin. To get there, you drive down a dirt road called Butte Lake – six miles of washboard gravel that shook our car so hard the dashboard GPS fell off its mount. A guy in a Jeep passed us, then pulled over and waved us ahead. “Your tires are crying,” he shouted. He wasn’t wrong.

The hike is two miles from the parking lot to the cone. Sand. Loose volcanic sand that steals half your energy with each step. Alex wore trail runners. I wore hiking boots. We both regretted our choices equally.

At the top, the view drops into the Painted Dunes – rolling hills of orange and red cinder that look like a Mars rover took a wrong turn. No railings. No signs telling you where to stand. Just a 700-foot drop into a crater that last erupted in 1851.

We sat on the rim eating peanut butter sandwiches. A chipmunk tried to steal Alex’s Cliff Bar. She chased it. I took a photo. That chipmunk is now the background on my phone.

The geothermal areas in Lassen are smaller than Yellowstone’s but somehow more intense because you can get closer. The Sulphur Works parking lot is right off the main highway – drive past it to the one-mile trailhead for Ridge Lakes instead. That trail passes a fumarole field where steam hisses out of rocks at your feet. The smell is rotten eggs, but the sound is what got us. A low growl coming from underground like the earth was digesting something.

A family of three walked past us going the opposite direction. The dad had a toddler on his shoulders. The kid pointed at a steam vent and said, “Earth burp.” That’s the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about geology.

For food, there is almost nothing inside the park. The visitor center has a cafe that sells microwaved burritos for $12. Don’t. Pack a cooler. We brought bread, cheese, apples, and a jar of peanut butter. We ate better than the guy next to us who paid $9 for a bag of chips and a warm soda.

The town of Chester, twenty minutes south of the park entrance, has a grocery store with normal prices. A loaf of bread: $3. A block of cheddar: $5. A six-pack of local IPA: $10. We bought supplies for three days and spent less than we would on one dinner in a Yellowstone gateway town.

The real hidden spot is Warner Valley. Most tourists skip it because the road is unpaved and the signs are small. We drove slowly in our sad little rental sedan and made it just fine. The trailhead to Devils Kitchen (another geothermal area) starts behind a ranger residence. No fee. No crowd.

We walked two miles through a meadow full of wildflowers and deer that didn’t care about us. At the end, a cluster of bubbling mud pots and a turquoise pool that smelled like a struck match. A solo hiker was already there, sitting on a rock with his feet dangling over the thermal area like he was at a public pool. He said, “Been here for an hour. Nobody’s come. Is the park closed?”

It wasn’t closed. Everyone else was at the main drag taking photos of Lassen Peak from their car windows.

Speaking of Lassen Peak – the iconic volcano hike. It's a five miles round trip with 2,000 feet of elevation gain. The trail starts at 8,500 feet, so the air is thin enough that Alex had to stop every ten minutes to breathe. We started at 6 AM to beat the heat and the afternoon thunderstorms. At the summit, we shared the rocky top with three other people. One of them was a woman from Chico who’d hiked it thirteen times. “Every time I come,” she said, “I see fewer and fewer people. Good.”

The view from the top is not dramatic like Crater Lake. You look down on a splatter of smaller peaks, a few lakes, and a whole lot of forest that burnt in the 2021 Dixie Fire. The burn area is eerie – miles of blackened tree skeletons with new green brush growing between them. It’s ugly and beautiful at the same time. Alex said it looked like the forest was wearing a bad toupee.

Season warning: Lassen’s main highway closes in winter, usually November through May or June. We went in early July. The road was open, but the snowbanks at the summit were still ten feet high in some spots. The visitor center had signs warning about “mosquitoes the size of small birds.” They weren’t exaggerating. Bring DEET or wear long sleeves and suffer the heat.

The cheapest night we spent wasn’t in a motel. The Manzanita Lake campground costs $22 per night for a basic site. We didn’t bring a tent because we’re idiots who thought “car camping” meant sleeping in the car. We reclined the seats, cracked the windows, and woke up at 2 AM freezing. A raccoon tried to open the door handle. Alex screamed. The raccoon ran away. We laughed until we couldn’t breathe.

That campsite came with a view of Lassen Peak reflecting off Manzanita Lake at sunrise. No filter needed. No photographer elbow-fighting you for the spot. Just us, a failed sleep plan, and a raccoon that probably tells its friends about the screaming humans in the Honda.

Three days in Lassen. Two people. Total cost including rental car, gas, motel for one night, campground for two nights, food from grocery stores, park entrance, and zero souvenirs because the gift shop was closed: $198 per person.

That’s less than one night in a lodge near Old Faithful. And we didn’t have to wait in line for a bathroom. The earth burped for us alone.