Day 15 ~ A Visit to Crater Lake ~ Entering California
This will be another big driving day. We could have skirted some of this driving,
but we wanted to see Crater Lake.
Originally, we had planned to visit Seattle, Washington and go up the
Space Needle. However, it was The Space
Needle or Crater Lake. We nixed The
Space Needle because we have been in tall buildings before…..and the only thing
at the top of the Space Needle was a fancy restaurant. We weren’t really sure if we would be
appropriately dressed for the restaurant after 15 days on the road or if that
experience was really worth $200.00. Additionally,
you have to use valet parking at the Space Needle. I can just imagine pulling up with our camper
and saying, “Hey, park this, please.” Since we are all about the National Parks
on this trip, Crater Lake seemed like a better choice.
One little worry this morning is the bearing in the wheels
on the camper are leaking a little oil.
Mike looked kind of concerned. I
asked him how he would fix it if we were at home. He said that he would take them apart and
repack them……That sounds nasty and inconvenient. We can only hope this little trailer holds on
for the whole trip.
While I was at the “library” yesterday, Mike made a pit stop
at Walmart. He got more shampoo, soap,
and Kleenex. He also bought some kind of
bag thing that straps to the bars on the top of the car. We already have one at home that we chose not
to bring. Hopefully, this will make
packing up easier and get some of the junk off the floor of the camper for
better living conditions. He and
Harrison also did something with the beds and took out the extender boards that
were leaking in the rain. Without the
tarp and extender boards, we can put the camper up and down very quickly. As we head into California, there shouldn’t
be a drop of rain as they are in a drought…..Hopefully we are done with jeans
and sweatshirts too, which should produce less laundry. Crater Lake will be cold, but I think we can
make it in shorts now.
On the way to Crater:
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| Mount Something or Other |
Still a lot of snow at Crater Lake. It was 51 degrees at the top of the mountain.
Many hairpin turns with no guardrails keeping cars from
falling off the side of the mountain. I
was on the wrong side of the car to capture the danger here……plus the teenager
is driving……I hope Aunt Cyndi is praying RIGHT NOW!
This sight is worth the driving.
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| A Volcano in a Volcano |
I am so thankful we didn’t skip this sight!
It was 80 degrees when we came down the mountain. Harrison is getting good at curves and heart
stopping drops. He said he thought he
had his 50 hours in now on his permit, but he doesn’t have any night
driving. I hope we don’t get any night
driving in on this trip!
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| Warm Enough Going Down the Mountain to Open the Sun Roof! |
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| This Sign is Just For My Book Club Buddies! |
Honked the horn! We
crossed the state line! We have arrived
in sunny California!
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| Twisty Turny Roads |
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| Large Redwood, but they got even bigger later in the journey! |
The temperature soared to 101 degrees then promptly dropped
back down to 61 degrees! The coast is
very temperate. The joy and surprise at
driving through the Redwood Forest is unbelievable! I have tried to capture these monoliths in
pictures, but you just can’t. So even
the pictures you have seen in books doesn’t really give you a good idea of how
this enchanted land looks. We truly feel
like we have driven into an enchanted forest!
Who knew one existed for real?
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| Gorgeous Redwood Forest |
To our delight, our campground is right smack dab in the
middle of the Redwood Forest. The people running this KOA were super nice and friendly. We even got to park our camper in the Redwood Forest!
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| Points for Creativity with this Flower! |
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| When a Redwood grows in clumps, it is called a sister tree. This tree has 7 clumps so I will dedicate this one to my six sisters and one adopted sister! (You know who you are!) |
We took
some pictures on stumps. The little
cabins that are set back here in the woods are very compelling. Also, there is a mix of camping
accomadations, tents, RV’s, pop-ups, etc.
That is usually a good sign to us because that usually means it is a
more naturalistic setting as opposed to a big RV park, which is “blah” to us.
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| Looking Up |
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| Campground |
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| See How Large the Stumps! |
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| Banana Slug- HUGE! |
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| This was funny. In order to have a picture of all of us, we had to set up the tri-pod then run to get in the picture. Harrison was the only one who could jump up the stump fast enough to make it in the picture. Side note: I didn't pee my skirt. I got chocolate on it and had rinsed it off in the bathroom. Yeah, I know healthy kind of went out the door a few weeks ago. But it was 70% Cacao Chocolate. :) |
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| Inside the Stump |
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| Harrison is inside the Stump |
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| Honestly, we expected Darby O'Gil and the Little People to pop out of the woods at any given moment! |
When we were at home, we talked about which attraction we
wanted to see the most. Surprisingly,
everyone in the family agreed that the giant trees were what we wanted to see
the most. I knew it was Natalie and my
must do attraction, but I was surprised that it was Mike and Harrison’s
too.
When I was a student, we didn't have Google. You had to use the Encyclopedia. My kids just can't imagine this. However, I learned a lot of things off my path of study because when you flipped through the Encyclopedia, you saw other fascinating pictures that you had to stop and read about. Driving through a tree was one of those fascinating pictures for me.
We decided to cheat and have dinner at McDonalds so we could
go out and hunt for the Redwood tree that you can drive through. (Yep. Health right on out the door!)
When we got there, there were several other families who
pulled up too, so we all took turns taking pictures of each other. I didn’t get as many pictures as I would like
because my camera battery went dead…..and evidently I forgot to charge the
spare battery too! So at the place we
wanted to see the most I had no battery!
We drove along highway 101, which follows the
coastline. So we also got to see the
Pacific Ocean too. This was a first for
two of us. Harrison felt betrayed that
Mike and I had already seen it……in Hawaii 23 years ago!
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| Sunset |
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| And a Lighthouse! |
Truly, this was the closest thing I have come to stepping
into an enchanted forest…..I love a good fairly tale, and quite frankly, I felt
like I had stepped into one here. Even
though it was almost midnight by Eastern Time standards, we even got a good run
in tonight with Harrison joining us.
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