Our goal was to get to Crater Lake National Park- by way of Umpqua National Forest, but first we had to stop for some
Cheese!
Tillamook Cheese is located in Tillamook, OR. I am surprised we made it out of there inside of a week! We took the self guided tour of the cheese factory and then chowed down on grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream (not in that order). Its great stuff but the Cabot tour in Vermont was better. At the end of that tour we were led to a room where we could eat whatever Cabot products we wanted, for as long as we wanted to stuff ourselves.Tillamook just had a few samples of cheese for us to try.
Anyway, back to Umpqua National Forest. There’s a lot to do just in the national forest. North Umpqua trail is almost 80 miles long, and you can hike segments of it. We elected to do the Mott segment- 11-12 miles long. That’s a pretty long hike, but there isn’t too much elevation gain so we were up for it. It wasn’t a very picturesque trail but we enjoyed it…..right up until what we thought was the end…
The sign said this is a loop trail but apparently we missed the exit trail head because when we got “back” to the truck, this was our view:
See our little tiny truck at the bottom of that cliff? Yeah, I spent a few minutes looking for the stairs or the zip line! Sad to say, we had to turn around and retrace our steps to find the exit, which made the hike a total of 15 miles- the longest I have ever gone in one day. Yup, we were tired!
After we recovered we continued our journey through the national forest. Along the way there are quite a few waterfalls. Luckily the trails to get to most of them were pretty short.
We stopped at several, which gave me an opportunity to play with the settings on my camera.
Crater Lake
It contains some of the purest water in the world, and the color is an amazing blue.
Our plans for this area fell apart rather quickly, unfortunately. We were going to take the tour boat ride but we missed the last trip of the season by two hours. Their website had bad information. Then we decided we’d just do a couple of hikes. Nope, the park was having one of its semi-annual “vehicle free” days on the rim road, so unless we had bikes, we wouldn’t be able to get to the hiking trail. As we drove around part of the lake, we debated sticking around for a few days so we could get in a few hikes, but the campgrounds were filled to capacity with people toting bikes in anticipation of a rare chance to bike the rim road. Oh well, we left, figuring we’d be back next year, hopefully.
The Roads less traveled
One of Paul’s favorite things to do while driving is to, literally and figuratively, jerk the steering wheel to the side while exclaiming “I wonder what’s down this road?” After I pick up everything that got strewn all over the truck, I reply “gee, I guess we’ll find out!” This happened a lot this summer, since it’s much easier to do in a camper than a 5th wheel.
Sometimes it works out pretty awesome, sometimes-not so much. We took one of “those” roads before we left the Crater Lake area. This is a Fire Road that leads to a look out tower. I’m not sure the word road is appropriate- more like “trail” but we made it to the top.
This is an active fire tower and we chatted for quite a while with the young, 20 something year old man who was working. He apparently enjoys being by himself, and prefers assignments that allow him to sleep in the tower rather than the ranger station. We were surprised to hear that only a couple of people a week make the trek up the road, and most of those people don’t even get out of their car!
Its a pretty remote life that he lives but he does have a “SPOT”, provided by his parents.
A SPOT is a device that allows the holder to send a small variety of pre-determined text messages, using satellite. It also sends the GPS coordinates, so when he messages his parents that he is OK, it shows them where he is. He said the only time it got used in an emergency was when his parents had an issue. Their truck broke down in a very remote area and they sent an S.O.S. to their son. When he saw that they were on a road, he assumed it was vehicle related, and headed in their direction with a variety of supplies to fix vehicles. They were successful and got the truck back on the road.
Anyway, moving on….we were now headed back to the Oregon coast. What’s the old saying? Why take 2 hours to get somewhere, when you can take 4? Well, that’s what we decided to do. We took the Bear Camp coastal road over the mountains to the coast.
I’ll admit a part of me was queasy when I saw the sign at the entrance to the road.
This road isn’t even open in the winter, but isn’t that difficult to travel in the summer time. Its very windy and very narrow. In fact, much of the road is one lane and there are pullouts in case you meet someone coming from the other direction- which we did- 23 times.
Coastal Oregon is spectacular, although completely different from the east coast. The waves were huge, and pretty dangerous.
We had one more scenic road in our bag of tricks and this one took us through Redwood National Park. The park road is lined with beautiful redwoods, and numerous hiking trails, but we didn’t really have time to hike much.
We did get out and stretch our legs a couple of times. I just marvel at the size of these trees!
The rest of our journey will be on major highways as we beeline back to Fresno.
