I spent most of this week at Lassen Volcanic National Park, with my son's sixth grade class.  Although I've been there before, I learned more about volcanoes on this trip than any other.  Did you know that all four types of volcanoes that exist in the world can be found in the park?  Thanks to Ranger Jean, who gave a great presentation to the kids, I know this and many other facts about Lassen.  Northern California has such amazing topography, all within hours of Nevada County.

	Before our hike up the Cinder Cone

It was also fun to observe the weather change as we drove through the park, and then home on Thursday.  It had hailed on us in the morning, then the sun had waved hello.  As we traveled the park highway, we were up high enough that it was snowing on us.  Our final hike of the trip, to Bumpass Hell, got cancelled since it was 32 degrees and blowing snow sideways at the trailhead.  The kids were disappointed, but it was pretty fun to see snow in September--especially since it hit 76 degrees as we dropped into the Central Valley on our way home.

Today we have a coffee that we last featured a year and a half ago, in April 2015.  I have to say that my favorite part of each morning while camping was the coffee.  It kept my hands warm and my energy levels up.  I enjoyed our micro-lot Honduran from last week, and I would have loved this Sulawesi Toarco Jaya AA.  It's a full-bodied bean, low in acidity, with strong walnut tones and a vanilla finish. 

One unique thing about this bean is the company that processes and exports it.  PT Toarco Jaya is a Japanese and Indonesian collaboration, a company that is working to improve the coffee in the east Tana Toraja region.  They have a model plantation, Pedamaran, that you can read about on the Utz page here.  For the last forty years they have been implementing sustainable and environmentally sound practices to create high quality coffee.