This was a trip to Crater Lake that Sarah and I took the last weekend in June. We had first planned to camp in the National Park, but a week before the trip I got a call from the campsite and they weren't going to be open yet. Still a heavy snow pack into late June! And as you can tell from the pictures below, there was still a lot of snow.One of the reasons I had never been to Crater Lake before is that it is just far enough away to make a weekend trip a bit of a pain. But, I was able to get off work early on Friday, as was Sarah. We hit I-5 south and missed most of the traffic that plagues Portland on Friday evenings. With Crater Lake being so far away, we stayed the first night in Grants Pass. I had zipped through this area on a California bound trip, but had never stopped. It looks like a pretty nice town. We had dinner at a burger joint that has some 40 variety of burgers and 80+ variety of milk shakes. The next morning we had time to hit up the local farmers market and unfortunately bought bread for lunch that can with a surprise hair.
Even though Crater Lake was the focus of this trip, we actually didn't spend that much time in the National Park. It was cold, rainy, and I would have liked to have gone on a hike, but the snow pack was really high. Kind of a bummer with it being listed in the 1,000 places to see before you die. I've seen it, but I'm not quite sure I can check it off the bucket list yet. We did drive around a bit, took some pictures, and headed north to find a place to camp for the night.
On the way into Crater Lake we passed about 5 campground we could have stayed at, on the way out...none! We figured we would come across one as we headed north towards Bend, but none were on the roadside. Actually this isn't true...at one point when we were closer to Bend we passed one commercial looking campground, but Sarah and I were so wrapped up in playing a car game (A to Z) that we decided to skip it. She won by the way...we both got to Z and she spotted a zipper before I could spot a kid with a zit! This was despite me making up rules along the way to keep her from winning!
Once we hit Bend we did find a little city park that had camping, but as soon as we pulled in a large sign said they were full. This left us with no options, so after driving around a bit we came across a Barnes & Nobles that allowed us to do some quick research on campground. What I came up with was the Crooked River State Park area, that was within an hours drive. Just east of Bend, the Crooked River has numerous rustic campgrounds that are spread along the river. It is actually a nice place to camp, with the river down in a small canyon. And with it raining most of the day, we lucked out with finding a spot that seemed to be missing all the rain clouds. Thankful for this as that last time Sarah and I went camping we got dumped on.
This is the only picture that I have from our camping area. Not sure if Sarah is approving of this photo, but considering she deleted all the other photos on my camera that I took of her, this must have passed the filter. Very cute if you ask me!!
The third day of our weekend trip was spent driving north to the Dalles. We hadn't done any hiking on the trip, so we did a quick hike at one of the many Colubmia River Gorge hiking locations. It was windy as all heck, so it wasn't much of a hike. For any of you planning a trip to Crater Lake, highly recommend late summer. Make sure all the snow is gone. I'll be back someday...maybe after I tackle the other 999 things to see before I die.
