Crater Lake

Today was an absolutely amazing day. The weather was perfect and every turn of the road revealed new wonders. I took a lot of pictures today and will upload them to facebook later (I may need to set the file size lower on my camera, too big!). I'm really just stunned at all the cool stuff I saw today, the pictures are lame in comparison.

I was out the door by 8:30 and headed up Hwy 138 from Roseburg (if you're in the mood to follow my journey on a map). The geography of Southwestern Oregon is impressively hilly. My usual range, from Bellingham to Eugene, is essentially entirely floodplains and valleys, and even though we think of it as hilly that is only because we can see mountains from the generally flat places we are. SW Oregon is hilly! And in a completely random way too, it looks like a two year old mixed up some lumpy mashed potatoes and peas and tossed them in the air to see what shapes they would make on the floor. There are almost no flat areas at all, and where it is flat, people have crammed farms and houses into every level spot. The towns look like the cornflakes that get mashed into the valleys of your molars.

Hwy 138 follows the North fork of the Umpqua River up into the Calapooya range of the Cascades. Driving along the side of that river, full with the autumn flood, with the morning sun filtering down through the huge old growth firs, was the first of several sublime moments of the trip. Every trail head I passed, I wanted to stop the car and hike for an hour just to experience that forest and river. I did pull over a couple of times to get out and take some pictures, but got going again quickly to make sure my main goal of experiencing Crater Lake would work out. It was so cool there, I actually want to go back there and camp!

After three hours of driving up increasingly steep and frosty roads, I finally reached the Rim Village of Crater Lake. The rim is at 7100 ft. and it is pretty cool that you can just drive straight up there. Any worse condidtions and the Prius wouldn't have been a good choice, but today it was just fine. There was a couple of inches of snow in the park but it was above freezing. In the photos you can see the extra 1000 ft peak I decided to climb up by myself. That probably wasn't a great choice safety wise, but I had cell-service (yay verizon). If any of you experienced hikers want to tell me to make a different choice next, I'll listen. The path was kind of icy.

After about an hour an a half I headed back down, this time going south on 62 to 97, into Eastern Oregon and towards Klamath Falls.



It was cool to see the forest change from the firs of the west slopes to the pines of the east slopes. You can see the differences in the forests when you look at the pictures. But after only a few minutes of driving down the the Eastern side I came out onto the Klamath Basin. The Basin is at 4100 ft and is a dead flat valley with mountains on either side and a 133 square mile lake at the lower end. Again, amazing scenery.

After leaving Klamath Falls, at the base of the lake, I headed back west on Hwy 66 through the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. This was probably the funnest drive of the day, super curvy roads, not a soul on them, old growth pine forest all around and another scenic surprise as I crested a mountain pass and suddenly found myself at the top of a 2000+ foot drop. Winding down the side of that valley, from the crest of the Cascades down to the fog filled valley floor was the last of four distinct eco-systems I drove through today. I was in bright sunshine all day, until I hit Ashland at the bottom of that valley and was swathed in fog all the way from there to Grants Pass where I am staying tonight.

On the map I did three sides of a box today. Starting at Roseburg I drove roughly 80 miles east to Crater Lake, roughly 80 miles south to Klamath Falls, and then roughly 100 miles back west to pick up I-5 again only 64 miles south of where I started. Not very efficient, I suppose but, my god, that was the single best drive of my life. Unbelievable.

Tomorrow I finally hit California. I'm heading down 199 to Crescent City and hitting 101 down the coast!