Road Trip - Crater Lake (and Surrounding Areas)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I was very excited to see this park. Crater Lake is one of those iconic American beauties that some people wait a lifetime to see. William Gladstone Steel was one of those people. He saw an article on the newspaper used to wrap his school lunch about the discovery of a lake so beautiful that people were traveling from around the country to see it. From that day forward it was his lifetime goal to see, and eventually to preserve, the lake for future generations. He fought for years to get a bill through congress that would protect the lake, and finally found his man in Theodore Roosevelt who could get the bill through by twisting some arms as President. Anyway, enough about the history, let's get to the funny story.

Lacey and I left California again, a little over a month after we had left the first time, and crossed the border into Oregon. Our first stop was an unplanned one, at Oregon Caves National Monument. We took the 90 minute tour through the cave and got to see some pretty awesome rock formations. 

Flowrock covers the walls of the cave in "wetter" areas

More flowrock coming from a crack in the cave

This cave is unique in a couple ways, but one of the ones I found interesting as a nerd is that it is marble instead of the usual limestone. Although both rocks are primarily calcium carbonate, limestone is a sedimentary rock while marble is a metamorphic rock. So basically, marble is a harder form of limestone that has been compressed by heat and time. Anyway, water still flows through the cave and through the cracks in the cave. That water carries a small amount of calcium carbonate and, as it very slowly drips and runs, it leaves calcium carbonate deposits behind that form these cool flowrock formations like the chandeliers above or the waterfall below.

Quite the geology lesson right? I just hope it is all correct.

Anyway, after our cave tour we headed up to Crater Lake with a short stop at Crate Lake Cellars winery! This place was cool because we got to taste wines for free and it is a small operation of just a dude and his wife. We tasted, bought, and moved on after some nice conversation with the owner.

Anyway, enough build up already. We made it up to Crater Lake to find that the campground was still (for the most part) under a deep blanket of snow! Yeah, that's right, snow on June 23rd!

One of our options for a campsite

A better option, this one had been shoveled out

Anyway, after all the anticipation, we set up camp, but it was starting to get dark and it was raining/snowing/sleeting/hailing on us. So, we made some dinner, got some hot cocoa, and hit the tent. We played some Yahtzee in the tent and went to bed.

The next morning we finally made our way up to the lake. It is literally the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I finally found a good (free) program for panorama stitching

The required blublogger shot

Anyway, because of the cold, snow, and potential to be buried overnight, we decided to leave the park after only one day and drove down to Diamond Lake to get a campsite there. It was awesome! The lake is between two mountains, Mt. Bailey and Mt. Thielsen.

Mt. Bailey

Mt. Thielsen

Our campsite was great and I even had a chance to go for a run through the campground on the bike trail. It was also about 15 degrees warmer, so that was a bonus.

So we camped there and had a great time. The next morning we decided to go to the National Forest ranger station at Toketee and find out what good hikes there were to do in the area. They told us there were waterfalls everywhere and even a hot springs that you could hike to. We decided to make it waterfall and hot springs day. There aren't any pictures from the hot springs because it would have been hard to get one without an old naked man in it.

Toketee Falls

270 foot Watson Falls (way in the background)

A closer look at Watson Falls

Taking pictures of ourselves again

Clearwater Falls

So that was our trip to the Crater Lake area. We left the area and drove up to Bend, OR to enjoy some Deschutes beers that night and enjoyed a night in a hotel because it was supposed to rain. More pictures below, and look out for our next post from Corvallis and Eugene!

Another shot of Crater Lake

Wizard Island, a cinder cone in the middle of the lake that erupted shortly after Mt. Mazama

Finally, a picture someone else took of us

The snow depth poles are huge here!

One last picture of the lake, this time from the Western side

Sally in front of one of the huge snowbanks

A giant, and very mean looking bear statue at a sporting goods/guns/liquor store... a perfect combination

Road Trip - Redwoods

So we only spent a few hours in Redwoods National Park and were only able to do one hike because the day was a total washout. On the way, however, we visited Drive Thru Tree Park where our Honda Fit (Sally, if you remember from previous posts) got to do a cool activity herself! We think she really enjoyed it.

Alot of these big Redwood trees have names, this one is called Chandelier tree and is 315 feet tall, 21 feet in diameter, and is estimated to be about 2400 years old. Crazy!

Anyway, after Sally had her fun we made our way to the national park where we were greeted by a downpour and a group of Roosevelt Elk grazing near the visitor center.

We headed up to Lady Bird Johnson Grove, named after the former first lady because of her efforts to preserve the big trees of California. There is a great little 1.5 miles loop hike around the grove where you get to see some pretty awesome trees, and, if you're lucky, you get rained on the whole time like we did :)

Me gazing up at a giant Redwood

Lacey taking shelter from the rain under a burned out Redwood

The grove during a small break in the downpour

More shelter under another burned out tree (Note my new Drive Thru Tree Park hat!)

One really huge tree

So that was the extent of our trip to Redwood National (and State) Parks. It would have been great to explore more, but we were soaked. We drove North through Crescent City and got a campsite on some Forest Service land. We got rained on all night and it was cold, not incredibly enjoyable. Stay tuned for another unexpected and not so pleasant adventure in the frozen tundra of Crater Lake National Park!

P.S. I forgot to mention in our Sequoia blog post about the Yellow Bellied Marmots we saw! They were everywhere and Lacey got some great pics. They are cute little guys, and we figured our friend Scott would enjoy the pics since he really wants to see one.

Road Trip - San Francisco and Napa

Another city night was in order because it had been a while. On top of that, Lacey had never been to San Francisco and it was on our way. The whole thing wrote the perfect script for us to spend a night and spend a bit of money.

We found a hotel in a good part of the city, booked it, and got there yesterday at noon. All the touristy (but cheap) sites were on the agenda. We rode the cable cars...

We walked through Fisherman's Wharf and the Embarcadero...

We checked out AT&T Park, home of the SF Giants...

We went to Chinatown...

and we had a great dinner (at Jasper's) and some awesome drinks (at Bourbon and Branch) and headed back to our hotel. This morning we saw the Painted Ladies (of Full House fame, supposedly, or not, depending on who you listen to), Haight Ashbury, Golden Gate Park, and the Golden Gate Bridge on our way out of town to Sonoma and Napa so Lacey could taste some wine.

Oh yeah, and we saw a funny sign on the way from Napa to our campground! More soon from Redwoods National Park and Crater Lake National Park.

Road Trip - Big Sur

We made it back to the coast after almost a month East and couldn't have picked a much better spot than Big Sur. It is amazing how different the coast is here when compared to San Diego, only a few hundred miles South. The sheer cliffs at the coast are only interrupted before rising to mountains by Highway 1. We drove through the Big Sur region for about 60 miles and saw a thousand beautiful vistas before reaching our campground at Kirk Creek. The campground was pretty amazing, but at first we thought we'd have to grab one of the last available sites that was right next to the road. We were pretty bummed, but then Lacey walked the loop and found that someone had left their slip up from the night before, making everyone else who had got there before us think that the site was taken. It was great!

 

We camped for the night in some really chilly and damp weather, woke up the next morning and decided to go explore. We stopped at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park and check out the McWay Creek Falls that literally spill out directly onto the beach. Pretty cool!

We drove further up the coast and stopped at a great little coffee shop (although very expensive). Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant had one of the best cookies I've ever tasted, and a nice place to sit and relax for a while. Once we got closer to Monterey, we stopped at Point Lobos State Reserve. What a great choice! They have one of the few remaining Monterey Cyprus tree groves in the world and also have some very beautiful shorelines and hiking trails.

After leaving Big Sur we headed up the coast a bit further and camped one night at a KOA before heading to San Francisco!