Oregon
Crater Lake
It was hard to leave Patrick's Point. It was such a beautiful area with tons of hikes that looked so brilliantly serene, but we are on a pretty tight schedule to get to Alaska and back and Crater Lake was awaiting us. So off we set, continuing up the coast and finally heading inland at Crescent City through Jedediah Smith Redwoods into Oregon. The scenery started to change as we moved into some dryer portions of Oregon, a section of the state neither of us has visited before.
The thing about road tripping with Bri and I is that we take too many stops. We're slow, well I am, so most of our stops end up being much longer than they should. As such, it took us a little longer to get to Crater than the map said but we rolled in around 3pm. Not as much time as we would have liked because we wanted to get a simple hike in but we were also going to be camping outside the national park on public land and wanted to find our spot before dark.
We decided to drive the Rim of the park, I thought some disappointment may set in but I was wrong. So wrong. What a beautiful park; the views were to die for. It ended up taking about 2 hours to go the full rim. I'm not sure if this is fast or slow but it felt slow to me because the park is truly laid out for this journey with pull-offs around every bend. Bri and I took full advantage of this, stopping at almost every pull-off just to take it all in. I won't dig in to all the tidbits about the lake because the parks site does that just fine. I'll just say that you won't see these views anywhere else and if you have the chance to see the park you should definitely take it. You will not be disappointed.
After we made the trip around the rim we started heading down the hill, backtracking our route a little to get to a spot I found on Gaia that looked perfect. Up a forest road around 3 miles from the main highway into the park just outside the national park. The spot ended up being almost as great as I had imagined.
We found the site around 5:30 or 6pm but up here it stays light later than we're used to in Arizona so we weren't rushing to beat the dark which was nice. But the temps def started dropping fast. Sadly this part of Oregon was also under a burn ban so no fire for us :(. Bri and I bundled up a bit (though I'm sure most Oregonites would have scoffed at us - it wasn't that cold) and setup camp. As we were, we ended up having visitors! First a pair of deer, a mother and young fawn were very interested in us and shortly after wandering off they returned with a juvenile buck and a few more doe. It was really quite perfect with the sun setting behind the tree's in a cool little glen tucked away in the mountains. But after a short time the deer started to become a nuisance. Clearly this was a popular spot and they were used to humans as they were hardly deterred by my loud voice nor my clapping hands. They circled our camp for a while getting closer than we liked a few times and I was finally able to send them on there way by clanging some silverware together. It was a bummer cause the spot is beautiful but I'm guessing they find food there quite often (don't worry Bri and I are very good campers and stick to the rules about mess and food).
It ended up being pretty chilly up there but the camper works quite well, Bri and I woke up quite toasty which makes getting out painful.
Portland
We shot off to Portland the next morning to visit some friends, do a few loads of laundry, and organize the truck a bit as things had gotten a bit out of sorts living out of it for a week.
The first night we were by our selves as our friends had a prior engagement that put them out of town the first night we rolled in. This ended up working out as we were able to take over watching there animals on the last night and get most of our laundry done. We were pretty beat too so it was nice to sit on a couch and kinda recover for a few. Not much of note happened this first night honestly haha.
The next day our friends Bryan and Arianna got back into town. We caught up with them for a bit while they unloaded and during the process we talked about the border crossing into Canada. We had read through the various websites online so we had a general idea but because neither Bri nor myself had been to Canada we did not know what to expect. The websites, of course made us feel a bit over whelmed because they prepare you for the worst but our friends, both in the US and Canada have had issues as well. We had all of our ducks in a row except for a full manifest of everything in the Nellie. Our Canadian friends are well prepared like us and mentioned that they kept a very detailed manifest when moving back and it helped them so of course we started scrambling. I'm sure Bryan and Arianna were laughing at us but we did it. We went through every item in that truck and wrote it down, which just killed our day. I was a bit bummed as I would have liked to spend a bit more time hanging out but I knew if we didn't have it we would regret it.
Later that night we all went to a great little brewery for dinner in Portland. We love Portland but I think Bri loves it more than anywhere else because you wont find a more Vegan friendly city and the restaurant did not disappoint. Good drinks, good food, and good company were in abundance. As much as I love the site seeing and exploring our wonderful continent I also love catching up and spending time with friends along the route. We don't get to see these people very often but love their company and it was a fantastic evening.
Sadly Bri and I were so consumed with the border crossing, manifest and catching up with friends neither of us took any pictures! FAIL!
Driving Through Washington
Washington wasn't a big destination on our list. I think because we were anxious to get across the border and get up to Kelowna to see another set of friends we haven't seen in years. Originally we were going to stop at a small bonsai museum outside Seattle on our way through but sadly they were closed on Mondays ( I honestly didn't think to check because who's closed on weekdays??). We did stop at a little spot called Upper Tumwater Falls. I felt bad about just shooting through Washington so I asked Bri to use her mad skills to find us something we could stop and check out.
Sadly the stop was under construction but we still got to take a little hike and check out a cute river. We grabbed a snack and set off for the Canadian border.
-Wes