Seriously. I say this EVERY time. We just came home from the Best Camping Trip Ever. I don't know how it's possible to keep one-upping our trips, but we always seem to.
We'd been itching to get to a national park. We briefly considered Glacier but settled on Crater Lake. It was kind of an impromptu trip... I think we decided less than a week prior that we wanted to go.
We packed up and headed out early Tuesday morning. We made a quick detour to St Helens, OR to buy a raft. What a fun story... we decided at the last minute that we wanted a raft, but all the stores in our area were sold out. A quick search of WA and OR Craigslist ads put me in touch with a guy in OR who had exactly what we were looking for. He was able to leave work to sell us the raft, and we were on our way. We only added 20-30 minutes to our trip... it was totally perfect.
The boys did great during the long 8-hour drive. We found a campsite at Diamond Lake, which is about 15 minutes north of Crater Lake. The area was nice. By the time we had everything set
up, it was almost time to go to bed. We were all sleepy from the long drive so we turned in.
The next day we drove to Crater Lake. We entered the park and began the 33-mile drive around the lake's rim. We were blown away by the color of the lake. It was true Caribbean blue. Simply amazing. We pulled over several times to take pictures, admire the colors, and just take everything in. Owen was fascinated by Wizard Island, which is located on the western side of the lake. He even came up with his own hypothesis on how Crater Lake formed: that Wizard Island shot a bunch of water from it's hole at the top, and filled the surrounding area with water. That kid is awesome with his ideas and observations!
Toward the end of our 33-mile drive around the lake, we went for a hike to see the Pinnacles.
It's a group of tall rock spires that are the result of volcanic activity from Mt Mazama. It would have been awesome to hike down into the canyon and see them from below. However, the only way to see them is from above.
After our hike, we wandered around the lodge and picked up our hiking staff medallion and found patches for the boys. Those are items we buy at every national park we visit.
We were pretty tired when we arrived back at our camp, but we decided to take the raft (which I named the J-Pod) out for her maiden voyage. It was a little windy, which resulted in rough water, but we had a great time. My family is super fun.
The next day we packed up and drove north. We weren't really sure about our destination but I had my eye on Detroit Lake. I'm not really sure why, since I've never been there and don't know much about the area. It was about halfway home, so I thought it would be a nice way to break up the long drive back.
We stopped in Bend and I seriously was ready to buy a house and unpack right there. What a cool place that was, filled with outdoorsy people. Anyway, we continued on and made an unplanned stop at the Lava River Cave. It's a 1.5-mile lava tube cave system outside of Bend. We did a little caving last year and Owen loved it, so we decided to stop. We were inside for about an hour before heading back to the truck to continue our drive. We drove through the Santiam Forest, which was nearly destroyed in a huge fire back in 2003. I've never seen anything like it. Apparently it was started by lightning.
We pulled into Detroit Lake around 4pm and found a nice spot to camp. Thursday evening was quiet but we knew the Labor Day crowd would start showing up on Friday. We spent Friday exploring the campground and took the dogs swimming. Trooper's foot was bothering him so we stopped (more on that later). We took the raft out later in the afternoon and stayed out for quite a while. It was amazing... 80 degrees, a slight breeze, quiet, amazing scenery, and a duck :) A duck followed us for a while and the boys thought it was hilarious.
As predicted, the Labor Day crowd (aka fair-weather campers) began showing up Friday evening, and by Saturday morning we were ready to get the heck out of there. We avoid camping on weekends for the most part because we prefer to be away from the crowds. We packed up and were on the road by 11am. We really loved the area and will go back there. We didn't realize it, but it's a pretty popular spot for boating. Our side of the lake was quiet, but other areas were bustling with people who were fishing, skiing, and just hanging out on their boats. Maybe we need to buy a boat. Hmm..We survived the drive home, and I was so sad to pull in the driveway! I could have stayed in Oregon for another week, easily. I really love it down there. Like I said before, this was an amazing camping trip and we'd love to go back down to Detroit Lake again.
(I promised to explain Trooper's foot: We took the dogs swimming and Trooper started to limp. We found a deep cut on his paw between his pads, and it had a small rock stuck in it. We flushed it out, but I noticed that the top of the paw was swollen. We kept him still for the rest of the afternoon/evening, but the next morning the swelling was much worse and Trooper was in a lot of pain. We packed up and started the drive home. I emailed a high school friend who is a veterinarian to ask if she thought the foot could be sprained or broken, but she was leaning toward a bad infection tied to the cut. We still weren't sure if we should continue home or find a vet in Salem... we dialed our vet's number for the hell of it, and he answered! On the Saturday of a 3-day weekend. He told us to head home and that he'd meet us at the office that evening. My friend's gut feeling was correct: Trooper had a nasty infection and he had a fever of 104.5. He received cortisone injections and antibiotics, and within a couple of days he was back to his regular old self again. Yay for great veterinarians!)
No comments:
Post a Comment