Washington Road Trip - July 2014

Are you ready to take a road trip with us through northern CA, Oregon, and part of Washington?!!

Good thing it is just pictures, though, because not much else would have fit in the car :)

MONDAY

My husband is pretty funny, even at 6:20 in the morning!
We stopped at Starbucks for his coffee and breakfast sandwich, then headed
up 101 to 46 east, then to I5.

This picture is, yes, for Poppa and Granny Clem!
I barely caught it.

Lake Shashta.

Bridge...
Funny, I just saw almost identical pictures on Becky's album!

Mt. Shashta

The first logging truck Matthew saw, he got so excited.
Many memories of driving north and when you see logging
trucks, it means you're getting close (as you're in Oregon)!

Thought the two clouds above the mountain were neat.

Can't see them all that well, but this place has big trucks in ALL colors!
It looked like a rainbow!  I think the name of the 'hill' behind is Black Butte.
It looks like it is completely made of shale and loose rocks.  Super curious
how it was formed.... Sean??? :)

Another view of Shashta... from the McDonald's parking lot, Matthew was hungry :)

Collier Memorial State Park

I think we arrived around 5ish, found a campsite, set up the tent, then took a walk down to the river.

The moss or lichen on the trees was such a vivid green,
but the camera didn't capture it completely.

So nice to see water again!
I wanted a canoe

On that short little walk we saw many types of flowers and small wildlife,
as well as some bigger wildlife....!

I found this quiet spot to sit where the mosquitoes weren't quite so bad.
We just here for a LONG time watching fish jump, flies dance, dragonflies meandering up and down....
It was a highlight of the trip to me!

A large hawk of some sort came and landed in a tree near by.

Notice the blue mini dragonfly on the blade of grass.

Then a bald eagle came along and chased the other bird away!

We walked back to our campsite, eaten by mosquitoes, hot and sweaty in the warm, humid air.

We had watermelon, salad, and cold pre-grilled chicken for dinner, then sat in our beach chairs, read and relaxed until about 8:30 when we got ready for bed.  Early the next morning we both heard a weird, howling cry.  Later we heard a recording of an elk and are pretty sure that's what we heard.          

Crater Lake, here we come!

I'll admit,  I fell in love with this valley before you start climbing for Crater lake.
I imagined being on the wagon train and reaching this point and being like,
"Here I stay."
(By the way, this was taken by me out Matthew's window with my phone :)

Climbing up, and up, and up!  This gorge that the road follows for awhile is really neat.
In the middle near the bottom of this picture is Annie Falls.

Notice these pinnacle like things sticking up from the side of the hill.

Hope this is clear enough for you to read.  Super interesting.

CRATER LAKE!  WOW!  Back in 5th or 6th grade I remember seeing an aerial photograph of Crater Lake in my geography or science book.  I looked at it so many times and wanted to go there, never dreaming that I actually WOULD!

The next 5 pictures are kind of panoramic.
 It was so much bigger than I thought!  5 miles across.  We hiked the second highest hike around the perimeter of the
crater.  Near the right/middle of this picture is about where the only spot is where you can hike down to the water!
Hiking was interesting at that high of elevation, whew!

Garfield Peak

Time: 2 to 3 hours 

Length: 1.7 miles one way 

Elevation: 7,050 to 8,060 feet 

Difficulty: Difficult 

Trailhead: Follow sidewalk on lakeside of 

Crater Lake Lodge going east to start of dirt trail

Features: Panoramic views. May be closed 

until mid-July due to snow. 

Phantom Ship Rock.
Later we saw a tour boat go by it; it was a dot next to the rock!

Don't get close to the edge!  Loose rock and hundreds, if not 1,000s, feet down!

Wizard Island
You can actually hike to the crater, that is active, if you take the tour to there!
Notice the snow in the foreground.... we had to slip and slide up (then down) in our hiking shoes, which are running shoes really :)  And I got to throw a snowball!!

We hiked a little ways down and stopped to eat lunch.  Right up on top there were tons of these TINY gnat things that bit with vengeance!  They hurt and were super annoying, so unfortunately we didn't stay up there long.

We had to wait about 30 minutes on one side of this on our way around the crater.
There had been landslides, so there was a crew, basically trained rock tumblers, tied off and rolling rocks down the mountain side.  When a big one let loose, you'd hear them all yell like boys!  Was pretty funny and Matthew was a bit jealous of their job.  The flag man said there had been a rock the size of a minivan, roll down, jump the concrete barriers, gouge the pavement, jump the rock wall and go rolling on down the other side, which wasn't planned!

This is Mt. Scott

One of the lookouts along the way.
The road was a bit rough and treacherous, so Matthew was concentrated on driving.

The visitor center and lodge are about in the middle of this picture, I think,
and the ridge we climbed to the left of the middle.

Climbed down 700 feet in 1.1 miles to the lake.
It was really neat to get the perspective of being high and looking down, and then going down and looking up!

Brad always sticks his feet in the water wherever they go,
so Matthew had to keep up the tradition!  It was pretty chilly,
but people were swimming in it.
Coming back up the hike we pushed it all the way, making it in 19 minutes,
huffing and puffing like steam engines and sweating dripping off of us!

We continued driving around the crater until we came to the north entrance.  We went out that way and then headed west(?) on 58 which was really pretty though Matthew said later it would probably have been better to take the other road.  We were hoping to get to Eugene and stay with Grandma Pauls' sister, Aunt Artis.

Then we saw this pillar of smoke and thought there might be a forest fire.
A couple miles further than this, we were stopped in traffic.  We waited almost 2 hours when we found out there had been an accident, a pickup truck drifted into an oncoming semi.  The guy in the pickup was killed, so the road was going to be close for at least 5 hours.  That would put us way late getting into Eugene, so we turned around going back to Oakville (I think??) where we had dinner at McDonald's and Matthew tried to fix some things at work.  A bit before dusk we headed west towards the accident, but pulled off in a campground called Black Canyon.  The massive trees towered upwards.  The underbrush was not cleared out, moss 6 inches long hung off of everything.  Nobody was around.  The signs said beware of bears.   We drove into it, passing the host's trailer, but no one else for quite awhile.  It got eerier and we half expected a dinosaur to step out any minute!  Finally we came to a few more occupied campsites.  We wanted to be near people and the sites were big, so it worked nicely.  Matthew set up the tent next to a fence (so the bears had one less spot to come from) and at the back of the site with the sound of the river so loud we couldn't have heard any snuffulling around if a bear DID come!  I wasn't too worried as we didn't even get any food out.

This is the river, and just on the other side of it there are train tracks.  
I think there were 6 trains that night.

We went straight to bed after exploring down by the river some.  It was kind of hard to sleep being all dusty and sticky from hiking all day, and it was still pretty warm and humid at night.

The next morning, despite knowing the water was frigid, we REALLY wanted to be clean.  This is what it looked like when we came down the next morning.  Matthew went in first, then I crawled out on the dead log to wash my hair.  That was interesting to say the least!  Then I went in to wash and wow, was it cold!
It made Hunter Liggett feel like a hot tub! 

Upstream.

 We arrived in Eugene around 9.  We went to Starbucks first so Matthew could try again to fix the problem at work.  In Oregon Starbucks has coconut milk so I could get a chai tea latte!  Visited with Aunt Artis for about an hour, then headed north just before noon.

Got stuck in traffic here, Portland.  I was curious about this airtram thing, so I looked it up on my phone.
Check it out : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Aerial_Tram

Grandpa and Grandma's!

Arrived at 4 something.

Matthew's phone had died so he was trying to fix it.

The next day we walked around some of their property. 

This used to be Matthew's fort.

Love this picture even though it is not very good quality.
It was very precious to spend time with Grandpa and Grandma.  They both told me how they came to know the Lord as their Savior, how they met each other and decided to get married and all that.  And some stories of their life along the way.

Uncle Tony and Aunt Deb's double wide.

Grandpa and Grandma's.

Looking down Grandpa's driveway.

Fresh strawberries and raspberries!

Having a chat on the porch while grilling ribs and baking salmon for dinner.

Grandpa doing his magic on pork ribs!

 Uncle Tony and Aunt Deb and Uncle Alvin and Aunt Elaine came for dinner.  It was fun to met all of them and get to know them a bit.

Grandma and I watching Grandpa cook breakfast.

YUMMY

I think we said the caption on this should be something like:
"Two peas in a pod, doing what they like best, eating."

I took this for Daddy.
It was delicious!

On our way to Mt. Saint Helen's in Grandpa's Prius.

The mountain is in the middle/right of this picture.

Here, zoomed in a little.

From the Johnston Ridge Visitors Center

After watching the little video documentary the screen and curtain lifts so you can see this.
It kind of takes your breath away.

You can see the flow, following the river that was there, down the valley.

We went down to Coldwater Lake to have our picnic lunch.

Lupins!  REAL lupins :)

Looking into the mouth a bit.

Snow covered sides.  There is a glacier inside!

Replanted trees.
They have an interesting textured look!
 
We left the next morning, heading south...

Silver Creek Falls!

8 mile-ish hike to see 10 waterfalls

First sight of the first one and my breath was already taken away!

It was hot and humid hiking.  The trail was muddy and slippery
in places even though it has been a bit dry.
Some told me when we got back that they did that in the rain!
Wow, that must have been WET! ;)

Bridge

Rock

Tree.
The dirt has washed away from around some of its roots.

This one right here is super loud.  You have to yell to hear each other.
Approaching it, we thought an airplane was going low overhead!

And yes, we walk behind this one, too!

Had so much fun getting to spend all of every day with my awesome
husband! We made lots of great memories and had many adventures.

So apparently these waterfalls are here because there were lava flows many years ago that stopped at different points or something.  Very destructive if it was to happen now as it covered thousands of square miles.

We were wondering about the dark layer here.
Once again, I was wishing Sean and Jen were with us! :)

Thought this was kinda neat.

The mouth of the waterfall,

you hike right up past it within 25 feet or so!

Then we had to walk back along the rim of the canyon to where we had parked.

We were hiking quickly but finally I HAD to stop and eat!

So beautiful!

Huge clouds piling up on the eastern horizon.
We almost wanted to stay to see if we could see the thunderstorm,
but then again, we were tenting so we were glad to be going through!

Of course we had to stop at Rice Hill!

This ice-cream is AmAzIng!  Wow!

We were going to stay at Rogue River campground,
but it was full, so we went on to this one on Emigrant Lake.
Like Matthew said, "Whose bright idea was it to make a campground on the side of a hill?!"
It was sufficient though and had really nice showers.
It was really warm and humid, I think 88 still when we went to bed.

Neither of us remember taking this picture, but I think it is cool!
That night we were laying on an old quilt on top of our air pads.
It finally cooled off enough that I pulled the edge over top of me, barely covering.
Matthew 'woke up' in the night finally cool and reached for the edge of blanket that was over me.
Of course there was none to extend over since we were laying on it,
and I muttered, "hey, this is MY corner, you can't have it!"
I think he woke up enough then that he pulled his sleeping bag out and covered up with that.
It was funny though because he really thought I had all the blanket and he was going to spread it out!

Don't know that I've ever seen a sun dog before!

We arrived home Sunday evening around 5:30.  Packed everything away and all settled in about an hour.  In the past I always thought camping and only staying one night in each place was ridiculous.  With Matthew and our little car it worked just fine!  We set up the tent and beds in minutes and the camping stove in another few when I needed it.  Washing dishes was rather challenging as my 99.99 cent dishpan got broken on the way up, but I think I only washed dishes twice.  

"Keep it simple" is my motto!  

We took a folding table, but didn't use it, and a small suitcase for each, but should have just used one.  Keeping the ice-chest cold enough and things from getting soggy was about the most difficult thing, which went okay.  I threw away one piece of meat when we got home and 

a baggy of shredded cheese that was completely waterlogged.  

Any ideas, experience, or suggestions along these lines would be much appreciated!

So that was our Oregon/Washington trip - July 2014!

Gone from Monday to Sunday.  

Saw three accidents, 

almost were in one on I5, super scary road!  

Saw some awesome sights, 

had a wonderful time with Grandpa and Grandma, 

and a great time as a couple.

 It was really hard to let Matthew go to work Monday morning :(

Very thankful we got to do it, though it wasn't with Brad, Vanessa, Austin, SB, Nelson, Cherisa, and Hailey.  Missed them while they were gone and am looking forward to seeing their pictures!

Hope you enjoyed the trip from your office chair, 

but I'll tell you, despite dust, sweat, and sore muscles, it is worth it to BE there!

God's creation is PowerFul!