Day 36 - Crater Lake National Park

Friday, July 15, 2016

Posted from: Woodburn, WA - Portland/Woodburn RV Park

Miles driven: 405

Total trip miles: 6,117

Everybody finds out what their single day travel limits are at some point, and today we found ours. It was a long day.

I had pulled up the trip from Crescent City, CA to Crater Lake National Park yesterday and knew it was about a 2.5 hour drive. The Redwood visitor center was closed when we finished hiking yesterday and didn't open until 9:00 am, so we planned to leave the campground at 9:00 am and stop there so the kids could get their Junior Ranger badges. We ended up leaving around 9:30 am. Not too bad.

The Junior Rangers!

As we were leaving the visitor center, I pulled up our travel path on Google maps and it was showing 90 minutes longer than it had when I pulled it up yesterday. I'm honestly not sure how this happened. So our plans for lunch at Crater Lake, now became plans for a late lunch at Crater Lake.

The trip there was nice and scenic, and we even had some very straight highways to travel on for awhile. We almost forgot those existed!

As we were driving a Shania Twain song came on the radio called, When you kiss me. The first line of the song is, "This could be it. I think I'm in love." 

Matt looks at me and reaches for my hand saying, "I think this might be it. I think I might be in love." 

I said, "I don't know. I think I need a few more years to know for sure. I feel like we are still in a trial period." He nodded and we agreed to keep doing this until we felt sure. 

As we were approaching Crater Lake, I told the kids that I remember sitting on the rock ledge by the lake and a ground squirrel approaching me. I think I even have a picture of it somewhere. Caleb was interested and promptly asked if the squirrel was a boy or a girl....Uh...I told him that I did not have his level of curiosity as a child and thus had not checked. (Was there a right way to answer that?)

If you want to get Matt going, ask him how much he likes following a hyper-miling Prius when he is towing a heavy camper. We followed three at various points throughout the day. Like I said...looooong day.

We arrived at Crater Lake around 2:30 pm. This is not a camper friendly park. We counted a total of 8 RV parking spaces. It was a Friday afternoon, so we didn't have a chance of scoring one. We stopped at the main visitor center (no RV parking) and Matt sat in the truck while we ran inside to get Junior Ranger books.

We then moved on to Rim Village where we could begin to catch glimpses of the lake...the unreal blue lake. Not knowing any better, we pulled the camper through the Rim Village parking lot. (A married couple should not do this while hungry.) After surviving that, we drove on and found a perfect spot with plenty of space and great views of the lake (live and learn).

As amazed as we were with the water, hunger was the immediate topic at hand. We ate lunch overlooking the lake. The ground squirrels were major pests. People obviously feed them all of the time. Grr.

When we finished lunch, we walked up a trail to an overlook. It gave us a great view of our truck and trailer! And yes, that is snow. There was still quite a bit of snow around the lake.

We made it! This lake is soooo unrealistically blue. The Native Americans in the area refuse to look at it because they do not think it is "of this world". 

The trip was fun again, after we had lunch. Happy family.

Snowball fight!!!! The kids could not resist. They mostly threw snow at the parents...hey!

To ensure my position as the worst navigator capable of finding the worst roads, I led us to this little cow path. Matt just shook his head and said, "Really?" I am the Queen of Crappy Navigation. Don't trifle with me.

Thankfully the north entrance sign had a spot big enough for us to park with the camper...sort of.

After many, many, many more miles, we finally arrived in Woodburn just south of Portland, OR. It was 8:00 pm. We were hungry. We were tired. We were HANGRY (hungry + angry). Don't travel until you are hangry. Ever.

We have been so good about this up to this point, but today broke our clean record. It was not pretty. After much discussion in clipped tones, we decided to go to a restaurant within walking distance of the campground. We probably stomped all of the way there. I don't even remember. I think I blacked out at one point. Cooking at this point would not have ended well. There are pots and pans and knives and forks and other sharp objects in the camper, people! We needed to be far way from this temptation.

At the restaurant there was a chalk board that happily distracted us while we waited (and Matt ordered drinks at the bar). It was at this point that I really took a moment to look at Caleb's outfit. I'm not sure the state of Oregon was ready for this guy, but here he is!!! Wow! (As usual, his logic is that "the colors totally match, Mom." Indeed they do.

After dinner, we walked home a very happy family with our ice cream shake to-go. Yum!

This campground was right off the interstate. It was clean, but not overly exciting. There was a nice outlet mall almost connected to it. For us, it was just a stop over for the night before we continued on to the Olympic Peninsula tomorrow.