Today is Ms. Penny Lane's birthday! We wish we could be with her to celebrate, but had to settle for a facetime chat and this super adorable picture.
We had a 15 minute drive to get to Crater Lake and the scenery on the way there was beautiful. Snow had lightly dusted our campsite, but as we got close to the park the snow cover kept increasing.
When we finally arrived at Crater Lake NP is was very apparent it had snowed last night, and it had snowed a lot.
We went to the visitor’s office and learned that the park received over a foot of snow last night. As a result, the road to the rim needed to be plowed and wouldn’t be open for a couple hours. In the meantime, we watched the park video and then ate some lunch. Finally, as we were finishing lunch they gave the go ahead for vehicles to drive to the parking lot closer to the lake. They said the snow banks were still very high and to be very careful walking around in the deep snow around the rim. As we walked up to the rim we were so impressed. The lake was one of the most beautiful things we had ever seen.
We were so excited!!
We walked around to another viewpoint and on the way over we realized the park ranger wasn’t exaggerating!
We took a few more pictures and of course our flag picture, but we weren’t really equipped to do any hiking or activities anywhere in the park.
Right before we left, I just had to take this picture to show how tall the snowbanks were!
Keep in mind Evan is 6'3!
Next we headed to the Umpqua hot springs. But before that, we realized that we needed to get gas and we needed it bad. The closest open gas station was 30 miles from Crater Lake and in the opposite direct from where we needed to go. About 5 miles outside the park the gas gauge started to flicker in its final mode. I’ve never tested it, but my guess is that it has less than 50 miles to empty based on a couple close calls. So we had no choice but to drive 30 miles an hour with the flashers on and hope we made it to the nearest gas station. I’m pretty bummed we forget to document any of it with pictures but we made it to the gas station about an hour later. Once the attendant filled the car up we checked the manual and apparently we only had .4 gallons before we would’ve run out of gas completely. Thank goodness we didn’t!
Once we arrived at the hot springs there was this sign at the beginning to let us know what we were getting into...
Once we arrived at the hot springs there was this sign at the beginning to let us know what we were getting into...
The trail wasn’t exactly an easy stroll in the woods and sure enough when we arrived we were greeted by a bunch of nude people. It wasn’t so strange except for the one family that brought along their children which was kind of weird. The hot springs weren’t as impressive as we had heard, but the temperature of the water was quite nice. We didn’t stay too long, but we did take a few pictures of the scenery before leaving.
The agenda for tomorrow is to start on the parks in California, but we have quite a bit of driving to do before we get there. Driving through the rest of Oregon we caught a couple more beautiful sights including rolling hills and this awesome ‘Merica painted barn!
We just reached the California state line and since it’s pretty late we will be carcamping, again… Tonight we’re staying at Craig's Beach campground within the Smith River Recreation Area.
We can’t wait to see the big trees at Redwood National Park tomorrow!
Lesson of the Day: If you’re under a quarter tank fill up at any gas station you see because you never know how close the next one will be when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Also find and arrive to the campsite before dark or else you’ll be stuck with carcamping.
Word of the Day: caldera
Lesson of the Day: If you’re under a quarter tank fill up at any gas station you see because you never know how close the next one will be when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Also find and arrive to the campsite before dark or else you’ll be stuck with carcamping.
Word of the Day: caldera