Crater Lake Snow to Lava Beds Desert

Friday, June 8, 2012

Congratulations Christopher and Ann Shirley! Cute proposal picture. Bet you didn’t know you had an audience!

The electric hookup did it’s job overnight. It was quite warm in the cavemobiles, and didn’t get as cold as predicted outside.  When first checking this morning, it appeared quite clear and looked like it would be a glorious day. Pretty soon it was snowing and blowing! 

After breakfast (we actually got scones this morning) we loaded up and stopped at the dump station to offload the contents of our waste tanks, then headed for the showers. We had four minutes for 75 cents, and were prepared to load more money, but just barely finished in that time! It felt good!

 

We stopped on the way up at the Information Center to check on another stamp. It couldn’t be located yesterday so we thought we would try again today. Different people were on the desk and when Fred asked for the anniversary stamp, it materialized out of a drawer as if by magic. The stamp was applied to its proper location in the passport books and, once again we headed for the top and Crater Lake.

We drove in falling snow all the way up to Crater Lake Lodge. Inside the lodge we oohed and aahed at the beautiful wood floors, the pine columns, the wood slab paneling with bark intact, and the magnificent stone fireplaces. It is really a beautiful building. We all stepped out on the deck overlooking the lake. Much of the lake and the island were shrouded by the wind-blown snow. The patterns of the snow moved with the wind would show an area of the lake then fade it out like a picture going in and out of focus. It was really pretty, but we were glad that we had gotten more detailed photos yesterday.

We did make a couple of photo stops on the way out of the park to look at Annie Creek Falls and the canyon in which it flows, and then headed south on 62 toward Klamath Falls, Oregon. The route took us through a very large pretty valley at Fort Klamath, then alongside Klamath Lake for a while. As we came around the lake we had an excellent view of Mt. Shasta in California.

In Klamath Falls, OR, Fred Meyer took a pocketful of change to fill our diesel tanks, and then KFC served up lunch for us since we know Betty’s fondness for fried pterodactyl.  We picked up route 39 and Hill Road headed south toward the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge with today’s destination the Lava Beds National Monument.

We stopped at the campground first to get a place saved, and then took the Rubble-mobile to the VC where we were able to get 3 stamps for the passport books. A profitable day for stamps.  They were without power for some unknown reason, so we couldn’t see the video, but had a nice conversation with the ranger on duty. He went into some of the history of the Tule Lake Relocation camp that is also under their wing.  We hadn’t planned to stop at the relocation camp, so the information was good to hear.

Back at the campground, we enjoyed sitting around in the sunshine for a while, then started a roaring fire, and as soon as it slowed down a little we threw foil wrapped potatoes on to bake. We started them on the grate, but soon had them directly in the coals. They were excellent about an hour later along with a great salad Betty made, and we enjoyed the warmth of the coals for a while before getting settled in for the evening in the cavemobiles. It has been another great day. Hope yours was too.