Day 26 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Shortly after we left our hotel in Klamath Falls OR, we crossed over the State Line into California.

Smoky the Bear tells us that the Fire Danger is Very High…

That is kind of obvious when you see the surrounding yellow dried out landscape.

We saw a couple of deer as we were heading into the park.

Today we are going to visit the Lava Beds National Monument.

At Devils Homestead, I took this panoramic shot of the lava rocks that stretched almost to the horizon.

Stopped at the Visitors Center and bought some postcards, but they did not have any hat pins. I will have to search for one online so that I can pin it on our map on the wall back home.

There are 25 different lava tube caves that you can explore in this park, but Karen and I are too chicken to explore them on our own, they are dark, damp, full of bats, bugs and other creepy things. If you are into caving, this would be the spot for you to visit. We will just enjoy the above ground scenery in this park.

Shortly after leaving the park, we spotted two deer grazing in a field by the road.

We headed for our hotel in Redding California. In Redding there is a famous bridge… The Sundial Bridge.

Billed as the “Worlds Largest Sundial”. It is big and between 10 am and 2pm, you can see the shadow of the arm on the sundial marking the time. The shadow moves 1 foot per minute so you can actually watch the movement as the earth rotates on its axis. Before 10am and after 2pm, the shadow moves off the plaza and is lost in the trees and water.

The arm of the sundial is 217 feet tall. I had to stitch 4 photos together to get this one shot of the complete arm.

To see all of the photos from today, you can see them by clicking on this link to my FLICKR site.

Day 25 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

We woke at 6:30am and had breakfast, packed the car and were on the road by 7:30am.

Today we are going to visit Crater Lake National Park but we have to make one stop first. We want to see Oregon’s longest covered bridge.

The Office Covered Bridge.

After leaving the bridge, we entered the park at the North Entrance and showed our National Park Pass which lets us into any US National Park for 1 year.

Crater Lake was once a large mountain that erupted and when the magma chamber underneath was depleted, the mountain collapsed leaving the crater. Rain and snow melt gradually filled the crater over thousands of years. The lake is 1943 feet deep, making it the deepest lake in the USA.

We are going to drive completely around the lake on Rim Road. This photo is our first view of the lake.

The lake is about 5 miles across and I took this panoramic shot to give a better perspective of the whole lake.

Karen and I at Crater Lake NP.

There are two islands in the lake… this is Wizard Island. Named so because it is shaped like a wizards hat.

The water is an amazing blue as shown in this shot with the trees and sky reflecting in the water.

Another panoramic shot of Crater Lake.

More blue water.

The rock cliffs are covered with a green lichen.

We saw some beautiful flowers along the side of the road.

And of course at this altitude, we are between 6000 and 7000 ft, we find some snow.

The other island in the lake is Phantom Ship Island. If it was misty, this would really look like a phantom ship.

We took a short 7 mile side trip away from the rim road and visited The Pinnacles. We have never seen anything quite like this. They look like giant sand castles. These pinnacles, although it is hard to photograph them in perspective, range in size from 100 ft to 3oo ft tall.

That completed our drive around the rim of Crater Lake and we headed towards our hotel. After dinner we topped off the evening by stopping at Baskin Robbins and enjoying a chocolate fudge ice cream in a chocolate waffle cone, dipped in chocolate.

To see all of our photos from today, you can click on this link to my FLICKR site.

Tomorrow we will leave Oregon behind us and enter into California.

Day 24 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Nothing to tell you about today. We woke up, we had breakfast, we went to the grocery store and bought some supplies, we had lunch, we went and did the laundry. Today is just a day off from travelling and sightseeing.

We are back on the road in the morning, heading for Crater Lake National Park.

Day 23 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today we left the State of Washington and entered the State of Oregon. We are going to drive along the West Cascade Scenic Byway.

There was a river running along beside us as we drove along.

However there wasn’t much more than the river that was scenic. I suppose if this was the very first scenic byway that we had driven on, I might find this more scenic, but compared to the majority of the scenic byways we have driven on, this is rather dull. I guess we are too spoiled by our previous drives up and over mountain tops, sometimes driving in the clouds, seeing alpine lakes and drifts of snow, that this scenic drive is just not measuring up to those drives. I guess they all can’t be more scenic than the previous one, every so often you come across a dud.

Smoky The Bear says the fire danger is moderate.

Two exciting things did happen though. We spotted another Black Tailed Deer crossing the road.

And we spotted this birds nest on top of a hydro pole.

We are still trying to figure out what kind of birds these are. If you know, please tell us.

So that is it, our first day in Oregon. Tomorrow we are staying put and relaxing, nothing planned except to do some laundry and some shopping. These two things promise a very exciting blog posting tomorrow so be sure to check back tomorrow and find out how the laundry and shopping turned out.

Till then… take care… oh yes, photos from today are on FLICKR.