Fun in the Northwest

Texas is hot in August, so we took off for a tour of the Northwest.  We visited with Kim, Carter and Scott for a few days and then took off for a tour of Oregon.

Our first stop was Multnomah Falls.  It's just 30 minutes East of Portland on I-84.  Talk about convenient... there is a rest stop on the Interstate and it is a 5 minute walk to this point.

Another couple of minutes up the trail puts you right on the bridge... an easy hike.

If you are feeling energetic you can hike to the top of the falls... 562 feet vertical rise... 56 stories.

We did it !!

We spent the night in Portland at the SWA Crew hotel.  Didn't see a single crew member I knew... :-(

The next morning we headed out to the coast... Tillamook... sound familiar?

Yep... Tillamook Cheese Factory.  We toured for about 15 minutes. After the tour we drove 140 miles down Hwy 101 (the coast highway).  This view is pretty much what we saw with a few beaches here and there.  It was 62 degrees and light rain the whole way... Still beautiful.

We made it to Reedsport which is towards the Southern end of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.  Since it was still raining we held off on the planned activity until the next morning.  

It was bright and sunny the next morning so we rented a dune buggy and pretended like we were kids again.

After I signed my life away and left a $1500 deposit... and watched a 8 minute safety video they let me take off in a 3 week old dune buggy.  The dunes were about 500 feet tall and steep... you can't tell how tall they are or how steep they are by any photo we took.

One of the amazing things about these dunes are that they are filled with Pine tree islands and forests.

And of course the view of the Pacific Ocean from the top of the dunes...

Martha could be heard frequently saying to me... "chicken!"... hey... they were steep and I didn't want to flip out.  I wonder what she would have said if we flipped?

Since we had a rain day the day before we only rode the dunes for an hour.  I had hoped to ride for 3 hours and make it to the beach... but we had places to go and things to see.

So we took off for Grants Pass... a three hour ride up the Umpqua River.  Wow... beautiful... famous for it's fly fishing.  No speeding here... Oregon has great curvy roads that follow beautiful rivers but they have a real shortage of guardrails.  Strangely, almost everywhere we drove in Oregon there was very little speeding... except for the cities.

Grants Pass... our favorite city of the trip... we could live there.  We stayed at the Riverside Inn... right on the  Rogue River.  We got there just in time for the 3:30 jet boat ride down the Rogue River for dinner.  I didn't make reservations for the boat ride because I wasn't sure we would get there in time... so we were lucky we ended up with the last two seats on the boat... right up front on the left had side... right behind the windshield... cool.  It was about 85 degrees and we took off down the river with about 50 of our newest friends... on a "dinner cruise"... Since we were late Martha didn't have time to get all dolled up...

We boated down to Hellsgate Canyon.  There were a lots of movies made in the canyon.  Two movies that I remember were Rooster Cogburn and The River Wild.  While on the river we saw one angler net a nice 3 foot long Chinook Salmon.  The fall run.  

Dinner was actually very good.  BBQ (not like Texas) chicken and ribs and all the beer and wine you could drink... I don't remember much after that... ask Martha.  The lodge we stopped at for dinner was beautiful... so I heard... just kidding of course. 

The ride back to town was just as wet as the ride down...  Being last on the boat... I had the wettest spot in the boat for the donuts we did.  Just like a jet ski only much bigger and with 3, 396 cubic inch V-8 engines.  The boats run very fast in 5 inches of water.

Crater Lake

We had to get up early the next morning for the main reason for the Oregon trip...  Crater Lake, a two hour drive.  I did make reservations for a boat ride on Crater Lake with a drop off at Wizard Island for a picnic.  Wow.  It is very hard to get reservations at Crater Lake Lodge and I am not sure how I managed to get a one night stay in a lakeside view room  There are only 71 rooms in the lodge.  The lodge was built in the 1920's and is unique because it sits right on the rim of the dormant volcano.  No air conditioning... but we had a freeze warning that night so it was comfortable.  

Here is a photo of Crater Lake and Wizard Island.  The lake is about 2000 feet deep... formed by a collapsed volcano.  It is basically constant level due to 40 inches of rain and 400 inches of snow each year.  It doesn't overflow due to one small porous layer that allows the water to seep into an underground aquifer.   

The coffee, tea and view was great.

We did make the 700 (vertical) hike down to the lake and took a boat ride on the windiest day of the year... yes... we got wet again.  This time they passed out disposable rain gear.  The lake was a lot rougher than I thought it would be, since it was down inside a volcano with a rim up to 2000 feet higher than the water... but... no shelter from the wind.  

Wizard Island was beautiful and unique... and dangerous.  The "trails" on the island (actually the whole island) were solid loose lava rock.  Most rocks on the trails were football to basketball size.  You had to watch every single step and make sure the rock you were stepping on would not move and cause you to fall... it would cause major pain to fall.

Martha on a "trail".

The boat to take us back to the dock and out of the wind was a welcome sight.

The hike back out of the crater was billed as "strenuous" and we were really worried about making it back out... but we made it.  With several rest stops.  There were 37 people on our boat and we were in the middle of the pack reaching the top... I was the oldest looking.

So now we can say "been there done that"... but we didn't get the t-shirt.

Crater Lake is worth the trip.  So is the Crater Lake Lodge.  We got our reservation about 6 months out... by luck... must have been a cancellation.  Since we lucked into a reservation we just had to go... we also made our dinner reservations months early.