Follow Us In Our Travels

5/03/2013, Friday:  We went to Crater Lake National Park today. Decided to go Friday instead of the weekend and there should be fewer people. We got up as high as 7100 feet and as cold as 49 degrees outside. By the time we left though, it had warmed up to the 60’s outside. The sun was really warm. It’s weird though, with as warm as it is, you would think that snow would melt fast. It’s pretty deep though. The south entrance is open, but not the north entrance (snow). We stopped at the visitor center and watched a short film. From there we went on to Rim Village. There is a visitor center there (closed), and a café and gift shop which was open. From there we could walk behind the visitor center and see the lake. We expected it to look larger (6 miles across). It is 1943 feet deep at the deepest point, holds 4.9 trillion gallons of water. (How do they know this?) We drove on the Rim Drive a mile to Discovery Point. That’s as far as the road is cleared off.  When the snow is gone, you can drive around the lake; I believe it’s a 30-mile drive. There are lots of hiking trails in the summer also. During the winter people ski and snow-shoe.  We were lucky we had such a beautiful day; there was a lot of reflection in the water. They say on cloudy days sometimes you can’t even see the lake.

 Snow at the Rim Village, Crater Lake

 Have to find that fire hydrant

 Crater Lake

 Wizard Island, Crater Lake

Crater lake

Thursday: We got to Collier Memorial State Park and drove around the campground, deciding on which spot to take. It’s kind of deceiving on their web site; they give lengths of the sites and a lot of them are over 40 feet so we figured there shouldn’t be a problem. Some of them would be hard to back in to, some have trees really close, and some aren’t very level, and some are reserved. We did find a site, B30, and backed up and set up camp. Curt washed windows and the front bugs off again. The campground has full hookups for $22 and dry camping for tents for $12. Lots of tall pine trees and pavement.

Wednesday, May 1st: I was able to get an appointment with a dentist right away in Klamath Falls, so we packed up and took off. We stopped at Walmart and unhooked the Jeep and the dentist’s office was less than a mile from there. I had to leave my partial for the lab to make a new tooth. There was a piece broken off at top that I didn’t notice. We went back to Walmart for the day and waited until 4:00 to pick it up. So, $110 later, I have a new tooth. Since it was late, we stayed overnight at Walmart with a few other campers and will go on to the State Park tomorrow.

 Kind of cold morning with the irrigation

The road along Upper Klamath Lake is very rocky

4/29/13: We decided not to pay another night at Eagles Nest (Curt wasn’t really impressed) and moved on to Tulelake-Butte Valley Fairgrounds at Tulelake, CA. Isn’t far north, but it’s only $18 for full hookups and on our way up. The wind was pretty wild today too. We ended up staying there 2 nights. I spent a whole day baking and using the oven. Curt spent the day metal detecting. He even found a smashed penny from Salem, OR Carousels.  The second day as I was eating a bowl of Raisin Bran, I felt something hard chewing and found out it was a tooth that had come out of the upper partial. It looked like it slid right out. So, to find a dentist tomorrow.

Reno is a short distance from the California border, and we crossed back in to California again. We stayed at Susanville Walmart Saturday night. Sunday we went on to Eagles Nest RV Park at Tionesta, CA. It’s near Lava Beds National Monument, so depending on how much there is to see there, we’ll stay 1 or 2 nights. The RV park is old, very small, 10 sites, half of which probably aren’t working right now due to electricity problems. We went to the end of the line thinking it was the easiest to drive in to and leave. The water has issues on that one, so Curt had to hook up both water hoses to use the water. Wow.  There aren’t may parks in this area near the monument. We decided to drive to the visitor’s center at the monument today yet to see what there was and if it would take us through tomorrow to see stuff. The campground hostess gave us a map that shows the visitor’s center and two other tourist areas. She wasn’t sure if the other areas were snowed in yet or not. We figured it would all be about a volcano, lava beds, etc. It seems like their primary tourist attraction is caves. There’s a sign as you enter the park area stating everyone is to go to the visitor center before entering caves. This is so they can make sure you “pass” their questions and don’t transfer the white nose syndrome that the bats on the east sides of the Rockies have, and the west side doesn’t. We watched a short film in the visitor center and went to the cave that is right next to it, Mushpot. It is the only one lit inside (not having to have flashlights like the others ones). We didn’t go all the way to the end. After that we drove the Cave Loop road and stopped at a few other places and took pictures of the lava rocks. We asked the ranger about the other tourist areas in the park, but he said they were still snowed in, and they don’t do any winter snow removal of them. We decided to go see for ourself J, and had to turn around. There is a campground near the visitor center and we drove through to see if we’d be able to fit. Nope, basically for tenting and small campers. If you like caves, you’d probably like this area. There were a lot of caves people can go in; from walking upright, to crawling through, whatever difficulty you want.

 Mushpot cave

 More caves

 

This area had burnt some time ago

 Eagles Nest RV Park

 they had goats too