July 6 - Cascades Scenic Highway and Crater Lake National Park

This morning, Aaron woke me up… and early. Surprise, surprise. He did however bomb the coffee so not a complete red letter day. We headed into Bend to get a brochure at the visitor center and stopped to get some locally roasted coffee as well. The lady at the visitor center was helpful and we were soon on our way along the Cascadian Scenic Highway. It circumnavigated Mount Bachelor and there were plenty of beautiful little lakes to stop and poke around at. We wanted to take the chairlift up to the top of Mount Bachelor, but we were too early by two hours so we didn’t stick around. We saw this huge flat gravel field at the base of the mountain and were impressed by the amount of overflow parking they provided… only later we realized it was the pumice field we were looking for. Our first stop was Todd Lake which supposedly had a loop trail, but there was too much snow and no loop trail evidenced. And by too much snow, I mean a couple of feet.

After Todd Lake we stopped at Sparks Lake which was really neat. There were volcanic rock tumbles all over along the water’s edge, but those damn kayakers kept getting in my photos… maybe I am just jealous of their awesome paddle. As we left the water’s edge to go back to the car, we went through some gorge like areas between the lava boulders. We also kept seeing all this bear fur everywhere – at least I thought it was bear fur. On another hike and there a bit too we also saw some dark greenish lichen in the trees, so now I’m not sure if any of it was bear hair and maybe it was all lichen.

The next lake was a deep green lake called Devil’s Lake. The weird thing is that it was not all that shade of green, only some it. I know that some of the green color is because of the glacial till washing down from Mt. Bachelor and the surrounding volcanic rock, but the rest I don’t know. Then we stopped at Osprey Point which was kind of a bust. It was a nice walk through the pines, but not much of a look out. We even hiked a little ways through the marsh, but it was too squishy, and not much to see. Plus there was a redwing blackbird that was not pleased with my hot pink tank top.

We stopped at a lake resort for a soda and some chex mix while I made some PB&J. After that it was straight through to Crater Lake though we did stop for Aaron to load the satellites on the GPS so we could track our changes in elevation. On that stop we got swarmed by mosquitoes, but it was worth it for Aaron to know we climbed 2500 feet on the arrow-straight 135. Turning into the park was anti-climatic as it looked just like everything else, but the higher we went the more snow there was. In some places it was obviously more than ten feet deep. We reached what looked like the edge and I scampered through the snow to see the view. It was totally awesome. Really. Crater Lake is the deepest blue I have ever seen and HUGE.

We had turned east just to see how long the eastern road was open and I stopped at every vista point just to see the view. Most of it looked pretty much the same, but still just as awe-inspiring. It’s a long ways down to the lake and it is sooo blue and pretty big. The road was closed just like we heard and we couldn’t buy our boat tickets in advance so we headed west around the rim to see what else there was. Not a whole lot. A trip to the ranger station let us know that only TWO trails are open. TWO. And really there aren’t that many to begin with. We went to the campground to check in and got a hint of the mosquitoes that awaited us.

As soon as we turned the car into the parking spot at our campsite we were swarmed. There was a little bit of snow on the site, but otherwise it was dry. Aaron put his window up, but I was yelling at him to put all the windows up otherwise they would come in the back windows. Aaron says this is because he’s not used to having back windows in his little sports coupes. I know you think I am kidding, but I am not. We got out of the car and dashed away and sprayed Aaron down with bug juice and I changed into pants and sprayed myself. We set the tent up quickly, cursing the mosquitoes. We decided to try the air mattress tonight and I hid in the tent trying to get it blown up. It was eerie seeing all the mosquitoes on the mesh apparently waiting for me to come out. Aaron hid in the car for a while, but then filled all our water containers despite being maliciously attacked by the swarm.

As soon as we could, we got out. We decided to hike up to Garfield Point, one of the only two trails open. We decided we were going to eat dinner up there, so we packed the jetboil, some water, and a freeze-dried beef stew. The hike was steep along the rim and in some places blanketed in thick snow, but the view was incredible. Crater Lake was breathtaking and we were high enough to get a nice view of the Cascades beyond. We only passed five people coming down (It was after six) so we had the trail to ourselves. At the peak we heated the water for dinner and slurped up the stew. It was pretty good and way better than I expected. And we decided it was 100 times better than eating with the mosquitoes and also way cooler than eating at the lodge. The way down was way easier than the way up, though I did slide in the snow a few times and once landed on my butt.

Once back at the lodge, Aaron and I enjoyed some cocktails while I typed five pages of previous blog entries about our travels. I’m not completely caught up, but we have impressed the bartender with our taste in drinks (We are old people – Aaron had a gin martini dry straight up (tastes like pine sap, but I liked the olives), a manhattan up (pine sap and bourbon, and I didn’t like the cherry), and a Tom Collins (lemony pine sap and I did not want to eat the orange or cherry). Aaron thought they were all awesome and doesn’t understand why I think they taste like pine sap. The bartender was very good at his job. I had a hazelnut coffee and a brandy Alexander. Apparently the bartender thought we were in our fifties, but I think it would have been more accurate to guess we were in our seventies or eighties as far as our taste in drinks go.)

On the drive back down the mountain it was like traveling a curvy runway. All the skinny wooden poles used by the plows to determine where the road is also have two bars of reflectors at the top that we did not notice in the daylight. We stopped and peed and brushed our teeth at a wayside so that when we arrived at the campsite, we grabbed the few things we needed, and made a mad dash for the tent and dived in. Very few, if any, mosquitoes got us that time.