The Nearly Perfect Road Trip (Part 2)

See Part 1 for the beginning of the story.

Fresh and clean, we departed Waldo Lake, bound for an even bigger, better lake. 

At one point, we saw something dart across the road in front of us, disappearing into the bushes on the other side. K. and I looked at each other.

"Did you see that?"

"Yeah I did."

"What did it look like to you?"

"A bobcat?"

"Me too."

If so, it might be the first time I've seen one... I am, in fact, not exactly sure when in the trip this occurred; it might have been the day before or one of the two days after, in fact, but it was somewhere in Oregon. But, I am putting it here in my account.

The sky remained so smoky, it was looking like we wouldn't even be able to see Crater Lake. The magnificent lake was the deepest in the U.S., supposedly so blue it must be seen to be believed. It was the attraction I'd most been looking forward to before the trip.

On the drive to Crater Lake

I was resigned; we'd already seen and done so many great things that my happiness was undiminished by this development. Nevertheless we parked at the edge of the crater and walked up to the lip.

We could see Wizard Island, but not much more.

We still made the drive around the rim, stopping at a few viewpoints. Look at that view!

My, what a beautiful car.

We also visited the Pinnacles and Plaikni Falls, which didn't suffer as much from the ash whiteout:

And a bathroom stop, where a wandering deer turned to watch us:

There was a surprise when we got to the campground. K. had reserved a site ahead of time, but still had to wait in line to register. It turns out that actual sites are not assigned when you reserve, and you have to drive around the loops and find one that's open. This left us vulnerable to a terrible disease we have called Finding The Best Site. Sometimes we are forced to visit every loop in the campground, wracked by anxiety that there might be an even more awesome site somewhere that we haven't seen yet. Thankfully there weren't that many sites open, and after ten minutes we had staked a claim to an acceptable plot of land in the tent-only area.

There was a store in the Mazama Village that offered alcohol and commestibles and we discussed the possibility of buying marshmallows, since we'd forgotten to bring any. I regretted that they came in such huge packages and said I wished we could buy a very small bag of just six marshmallows. Heaven knows marshmallows are cheap, but I don't think I've ever finished an entire package in my life.

Somehow, the woman in the neighboring campsite heard us because she came over with a ziploc of marshmallows for us.

This is possibly the best marshmallow-themed picture I've ever taken.

She said it was a peace offering because her very small child was liable to start crying at five in the morning. In any case it was very sweet.

I wanted to have dinner in the restaurant at Mazama Village. Such things charm me. I didn't visit a large National Park, the kind that have "villages," until I was about thirty, and the idea of being able to purchase food, shower, AND camp under the stars while viewing some of the world's best scenery still blows me away. It is my perfect combination of civilized and wild. And yet, to date I had never eaten at a restaurant in a National Park.

I got fish and chips while K. had a burger and fries. We were halfway through the meal when K. realized that the fries were lightly battered, with a faintly visible dusting of what was likely wheat (the waitress confirmed). This brings me to what is a continual source of frustration for both of us: foods being doctored with unnecessary ingredients. French fries are incredible just as they are, just some potatoes thrown in oil. Why do they need wheat? K. is gluten-free and I am lactose intolerant, and having to read/ask the ingredients of everything invites one into a topsy-turvy world where nothing makes sense anymore.  Why does this chewing gum have milk in it? Why is there wheat in the scrambled eggs? Why do these hot dogs contain milk?

All that aside, I was grateful for a real meal. We also explored the gift shop, where I got K. a nice hoody with a picture of Crater Lake on it so we could see what the lake looked like. We returned to the campsite for some drinks. We then walked over to a truly terrible ranger program about birds that I'm not sure any amount of alcohol would have rendered enjoyable. After that, it was campfire and marshmallow time.

So that's what Crater Lake looks like...

I had meant for the day to be a slow one -- make it to our campsite by two, then do some actual relaxing -- but our time had become packed with the same dawn-to-darkness activity of the first few days of the trip. We fell asleep with the hope that the winds would shift during the night and our view would be clear in the morning.

The next day, the view from the trail behind the campsite wasn't too promising...

...but, yes, the skies were a little clearer, allowing us to see more of the rim.

Sort of, anyway. We enjoyed the view and hot dogs at the cafe, but we were pressed for time. We had to make it to the coast to meet up with one of K.'s old friends.

As we approached the coast there was an elk viewing area where the elk were imitating African wildebeests, giving rides to birds:

A bachelor party

K.'s friend was waiting for us at the beach and took us on a little walk up and through the coastal forests, before joining us for dinner at an adorable Thai restaurant.

It was after our visit with her that we endured the incident that makes this the Nearly Perfect Road Trip instead of the Perfect Road Trip.

We had booked two nights at an Airbnb in Florence. It looked lovely online, with firepit, sauna, deck with hammock, etc. It was dark by the time we arrived, and it took us several minutes to find our entrance from the directions, which were confusing. There was a placard next to the glass door stating that the door was unlocked for us and to call these numbers if there were any trouble, and this was the wifi password. The door was locked. We couldn't get through to the numbers. There was no wifi signal.

Then, incongruently, we saw children run through our room beyond the glass door and run out again.

K. finally managed to get through to someone, who had her husband unlock the door for us, and we entered into a moldy converted sun porch. They invited us through a disintegrating sliding closet door into the rest of the house and showed us the bathroom. We would have to walk through their living area, where they were currently preparing dinner, in order to take a shower. The reek of cat pee was overpowering, the carpet covered in stains. Also incongruently, the couple explained that they had a carpet-laying business. The unexpected children ran around hollering. We went back to our room and took in a deep breath (through our mouths!) and looked around. We could hear everything the family was saying and doing through the cheap doors, which had no lock. None of this situation had been outlined by the listing, and we immediately wanted out.

But we were in a vacation town on a Friday night, and everything else in town was likely booked. I decided I wasn't skipping out on a shower and went to take one while K. searched the web. I tiptoed past the family, trying not to make eye contact. The spider-festooned bathroom, which was wet with recent use, also had no lock, so I rolled up the bath mat and shoved it against the door.

K. hadn't found any other lodging when I returned, so we decided to just sleep in our bags on top of the now-suspect bed. We would leave early in the morning to try to find an open campsite for Saturday night, and if we failed we could just come back and stay here again.

In the morning we closed up the room, which couldn't be locked from the outside either. Driving up the coast, we pulled off at the first campground we saw, a small Forest Service affair. Remarkably, there were two open sites! We chose a lovely, secluded spot carved out of lush vegetation with shafts of golden sunlight slanting through. The coastal air smelled delicious. I was filled with relief. It was the best campsite ever.

Well, this seems promising.

We realized that our Thai leftovers were still in the fridge at the Airbnb. I started some oats while K. drove back up the road to get them. When she got there, she found the door open and the meals missing from the fridge. They told her they thought we'd checked out, so they put our food in their fridge (??) and were airing the room out. The little boy handed the meals to Kade, saying, "This one's good, this one's not."

We strove to quickly forget this experience (aside from leaving an appropriate review). That morning we had delicious oatmeal en plein air, followed by a hike to some dunes.

Orchid?

K. was eager for us to visit the Sea Lion Caves, which she had first visited many years ago. The Sea Lion Caves is a lavishly touristy outpost tacked on to a genuine natural marvel. One descends hundreds of feet in an elevator to the country's largest sea cave, where sea lions come to rest from their maritime exertions.

The brisk wind was wintry. Breakers rolled in through the cave's openings, spilling onto the rocks. Since it was summer, only a few sea lions were present in the cave, but it was enjoyable to observe their lounging and roaring. (No California sea lions were present, so there was no barking; the Steller sea lions made more of a roar that sounded, well, exactly like a very long belch.) There were also viewing areas outside to see where most of the sea lions were sunning themselves.

After that we visited some beaches to explore tide pools and collect rocks.

We had more plans for the late afternoon and evening, but I was getting very tired, and we still hadn't had any time for simple relaxation on our trip. We decided to just get a bottle of wine, go back to the campsite and start a fire. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable evenings of the trip.

Setting up my pad and sleeping bag in the tent... I hate the labor of undoing my boots and taking them off, but I also hate getting dirt or mosquitos in the tent.

These paleo puffs were an essential component of the evening. We ate the entire bag in one sitting.

The next day, I sadly bid farewell to the campsite that rescued us and we headed up the coast. We stopped to see the Oregon Coast Aquarium and Beverly Beach before finally arriving in Portland, where we would be visiting with K's best friend.

Our Airbnb in Portland was thankfully less in the mold of the previous one and more like all the other Airbnbs I've stayed at, which were lovely.

The next morning we went to visit the rose garden and Japanese gardens, both of which were awesome. It's amazing how different roses (and their smells!) can be.

The one above was huge, with a scent so strong I practically heard it as well as smelled it.

Here's another photo from the rose garden, but not of a rose. We first discovered this while going through our trip pictures. Neither of us remembers taking a photo of some random scrubby plants, never mind one with a hazy glowing shape in the middle of it, but here it is.

I have no explanation for this, but it's also not especially compelling as a photo of the spirit world. If the spirits wanted to communicate with us, I think they could have chosen a better way than making our camera take a surreptitious snapshot of some bushes and a smear in the shape of a giant human chromosome.

The Japanese gardens were perfect on this grey day, but unfortunately not too many of my photos turned out well in the dim light. Here's one that did:

All this, and our trip was only about half over! Obviously, there will have to be a Part 3.

The Nearly Perfect Road Trip (Part 1)

Before we begin, just a note -- I realized this week that my blog is ten years old. I missed the actual birthday, which was back in May. Over time the blog has lost its science-for-the-layperson asides and picked up more backpacking info, but it still remains basically a venue for sharing my photos and stories with friends and family. Some trivia: the cover photo of a younger me was taken in March 2008 in Petrified Forest National Park, on a school field trip, by a man named David whose last name I no longer recall. I believe I was waiting for the rest of our group to come back from somewhere so we could go do some other thing. I still own that hat. Onward...

As you can read in the last post, we liberated my car from the shop just in time for our two-week road trip. After all the reassessments when the shop kept finding more hail damage, the total cost to repair actually ended up being more than I had paid for the car. There are still a couple dings I have to bring the car back in for that they didn't have time to finish.

We packed the car and planned to leave as soon as I finished work, heading a couple hours north to spend the first night at Vedauwoo. This was the original "scene of the crime," the place where our cars had been damaged by tennis-ball-sized hail on Memorial Day weekend. But it's also an incredibly convenient place to camp. However, Kade happened to check the weather for Vedauwoo that day and saw there was a chance of hail in the early evening. Not wanting to tempt fate, we decided to wait until after dinner to leave.

We'd been rushing to pack everything and it was actually very nice to have a chance to slow down and rest before leaving. We had a leisurely, real-food dinner, and time to remember various items we'd forgotten to pack. (Of course, in my experience, having more time to remember items inevitably leads to "remembering" several items of borderline importance that you don't need and probably shouldn't be bringing at all.)

Finally we headed out, just as the last light was fading from the sky. It felt surreal, finally being on this trip that we'd been planning, talking about and looking forward to for months. Was this really happening? We got in to Vedauwoo quite late but found an open site. The stars were partly visible and a bright moon had risen.

In the morning we took a little hike before driving, climbing up an old disused path toward the top of Turtle Rock. You can tell that blasting, concrete work and wooden bridge building had been done to create the path, but it looked like it hadn't been maintained in decades -- in fact it looked de-maintained, if that's a thing. Only traces of concrete remained of former stairways, and metal posts that might once have supported railings or signs had been cut off near ground level. I have no idea why. It seemed to be a lovely path to a great overlook, with no obvious reason to give up on or actively dismantle it.

After that, it was time to drive west. We stopped at a gas station to have lunch at a tiny picnic table, thankfully on the leeward side of the building as the wind would have taken our lunches away. I'm guessing this kind of weather happens a lot, because the banners outside the gas station looked like this:

In an attempt to make driving across southern Wyoming more interesting, we also decided to make a little detour to visit a site of interest that was marked with a red square on my National Geographic Adventure Edition Atlas. It turned out to be nothing more than a historic placard, which neither of us had the interest to read. (This would occur more than once on the trip.)

By dinnertime we were in Salt Lake City, touring Kris and Erin's house. We ate at a nice German Turkish restaurant and went to a Bluegrass concert. There was an interesting fountain... or perhaps a sprinkler? ...at the venue:

We danced to some songs. Erin showed us the Mormon mall and temple grounds, which were all very pretty and very enjoyable at 10pm without all of the practitioners trying to convert us.

The next day, headed to Boise and still attempting to stop and smell the roses on our journey, I suggested a visit to Shoshone Falls. On the map, it looked like it was just off the highway. Twenty minutes of traffic lights later, we rolled in under the blazing-hot sun to see the giant falls down to a late-summer trickle. Well, comparatively. It did have a rainbow. Then, into the car for 20 more minutes of traffic lights till we were back on the highway. (I was starting to reconsider this more-about-the-journey-than-the-destination thing.)

Kris and Erin had told us that their friends had told them that there was a county-run tubing operation in Boise where you could rent a tube, float the Boise River through the city, then take a shuttle back. Since it was 95 degrees that day, K. and I decided to do it. We arrived at about 4pm and got tubes for $12 each, then hit the river, along with about 100 other people.

It was a festive atmosphere on the mostly-calm river, with a few drops and mini-rapids that soaked us. The water was crystal-clear and cold. The air temperature was lower on the water too, and we were in the shade for most of the ride, which led to some shivering and blue fingers. Trees lined the banks so we couldn't actually see the city; we might have been in the middle of the wilderness. Especially since we kept hearing drum beats. They'd get louder for a while, then fade away. (K. was relieved that I heard it too and she wasn't just going crazy.) Finally we saw that someone in a raft ahead of us had a big drum. Well, of course.

After exactly 2 hours, we came to a bridge with a sign on it saying to exit the river. We were in another park. Workers were nearby accepting rental tubes, and soon the shuttle bus pulled up. We'd had a great time on the river despite the lack of various things we missed during the trip, such as my camera, alcohol, and circulation in our fingertips. We have sometimes considered moving to Boise, and the existence of such an awesome and affordable attraction right in town certainly sweetened the idea.

The light was fading by the time we made it to our Airbnb, which turned out to be extremely cute. Our room was in an outbuilding that we reached through a special side gate and path on the property. Old forest service trail signs made me feel like I was out in the woods again (and on a very confusingly signed trail).

We'd had a long day and didn't have time for much other than heating up a can of soup, accidentally dumping half of it on the ground and going to bed. We definitely regretted not having more time to explore the city, but tubing is tubing.

We headed toward Bend, OR the next day, but I can't tell you much about what we passed. While it had been very hazy in Denver thanks to all the forest fires burning around the west, and worse in Salt Lake City and Boise, it was now so smoky that the edge of the world seemed to occur about 1/4 mile from the road. There was just... white. While it was sad to not be able to see the landscape, I felt oddly coccooned, adrift in a blue space capsule with my Best Person, and that was just fine.

We passed through Bend, where I noticed that even the gas stations had good beer. Our campsite for that night was in Newberry National Volcanic Monument, which is a very cool park that I had never heard of before. (Ironically, K., who planned this part of the trip, had also never heard of it -- she booked the campsite without realizing it was in a national monument.) Our site was right on one of the lakes in a giant caldera that sits over a still-active magma body.

I had recently learned that we were going to hike to a hot springs. She hadn't mentioned this before the trip! We set out around the lake with our bathing suits.

The hot springs were really hot seeps where steaming water oozed out of the black lakeshore gravel, and people had dug pits and lined them with logs. Many of the pools were too hot to sit in, and we explored to find one that was tolerable. The water was so hot that a pebble lifted from a pool would dry in seconds as we watched, the water evaporating from its surface. Splashing cold lake water into the pools helped.

We were all by ourselves for a while. The air temperature was pleasant, the scenery beautiful (if smoky), the silence and solitude refreshing. All in all it was extremely relaxing and became one of my favorite parts of the trip.

We walked back to the site in silence as an orange-pink sun disappeared into the smoky haze before it even touched the horizon.

The next morning, we prepared our backpacking packs because we were going backpacking. But, not yet. Curious about the previously-unknown national monument that surrounded us, we decided to do a couple small hikes in Newberry before we left. One was called the Big Obsidian Flow. Here, erupted lava congealed into a jumbled mass of rock with a high proportion of obsidian. Ancient peoples knew about the deposit and traveled great distances to gather enough of the precious rock for all the tools they would need to make in the coming year.

It was an otherworldly landscape and one of the most unique hikes I've ever done. I was more careful than ever not to trip, not wanting to slash my knees on the extremely sharp rocks. It was crazy to me that this erupted 1,300 years ago -- which, while extremely recent in geologic terms, was still quite a long time ago in human terms -- and still it had only been colonized by a bare handful of little trees. It stretched on and on into the distance like a giant slag heap left by a planetary-scale mining operation.

The last picture shows the size of the flow in relation to my car. Luckily the flow stopped short of the parking lot.

We also checked out the short hike to Paulina Falls...

...before heading to our backpacking destination, Waldo Lake.

This was a backpacking loop that some person had posted on the internet. We had chosen it because we were looking for a quick and easy trip to get us into the Oregon woods. It was advertised as "easy" and suitable for families. On the map, it followed the lake for a bit, then headed off into the woods, over a couple of ridges, then circled back to the lake.

Well, this seems promising.

In real life, the route ascended steeply through the woods, after which it dropped a bit, ascended steeply through more woods on a brushy, barely-maintained path festooned with spider webs, then plummetted in a long, seriously near-vertical descent to another stretch of viewless woods, and some more up and down. I didn't take too many pictures because there wasn't much to take pictures of. I'm not going to post a link to this loop, because no one should do it ever again, let alone families. Perhaps families of Marines.

However, there was this giant tree.

Besides beautiful Waldo Lake itself, the only saving grace of this trip was the berries. Blueberries and huckleberries were everywhere, especially on the most boring, steepest, spiderwebbiest parts of the trail. I was picking and eating them on the fly, trying not to fall too far behind K. My tongue was purple.

There was also this bird.

Finally we got back to the edge of the lake and soon found a very nice campsite not far from the shore. The water had been lapping in small wavelets that left a pattern of hearts along the shore.

Filtering water from a lake is often a challenge, since they tend to be so shallow along the shore that dipping your container in will stir up the bottom sediment and risk clogging the filter. There was a fallen log that extended out into the lake here, and I carefully walked out on it to dip a ziploc into the lake to get some filterable water.

It was a quiet night. In the morning, we enjoyed the lake for a bit before hiking out.

There were interesting red rocks in the water by shore, and a toad hiding in our breakfast log.

I had been told that the trees in the Pacific Northwest were big, but no one said anything about the mushrooms!

When we arrived at the trailhead, I finally read the introductory sign and was very impressed.

Of course, we had to jump in the lake. This was possibly at odds with the sign's appeal to keep the lake pure, but at least we didn't have any sunscreen or bugspray on, and were introducing mainly trail dust and impure thoughts.

After futzing around at the end of the dock and taking some posed shots, we leaped in at the same time. The water was so cold that I had to immediately remove myself, which was difficult because we had jumped off the end of the dock and were now 50' from shore. I don't think I've ever swum so fast. My hands were going numb by the time I got out. But I definitely felt cleaner, which was a good thing as it would be another couple of days before we would be showering.

Our next stop would be Crater Lake, the thing I'd most been looking forward to as we planned our trip. Would the wildfire smoke clear in time to see anything? Check back for Part 2 soon!