So, we have just one week to go and we’ll be back home. We have survived with some blow-ups between us all, but it seems with one week to go the kids are getting a bit of cabin fever and we all had a major argument and screaming at each other match this morning. The good news was that this had been a surprisingly quiet spot (until we started screaming!) – because unless they were stealth trains, no trains went by the entire time we were there, and the highway was very quiet, as expected.
We had a plan for the next two nights, but decided to change plans slightly. We were going to visit Crater Lake National Park on Monday, but figured that we could manage the drive today instead, and head towards the Oregon coast a day earlier.
The drive was perfectly manageable. We got to Crater Lake NP sometime around 3pm, I think, and once inside the park the drive was up another hill via a winding road.
Crater Lake is renowned for being set in the clouds, so we obviously had picked our days well because it was perfectly clear. There were only a few high, wispy clouds, but basically a blue sky. As we got up to the main viewing area, we were very happy to see that the small car park actually had a designated bus and RV parking area – why can’t Yosemite do that, when Yosemite is a way larger park?! There were a number of cars parked in the RV spaces, which we weren’t too happy about, but luckily two cars moved in succession and we had a place to park.
Crater Lake is somewhere we’ve never been, so it was good to visit somewhere new, and with the weather cooperating, it was great to spend an hour or so here. The northern road had apparently only opened the day before, which was lucky for us as we wanted to leave by that route. They don’t plow these roads in the winter, so they basically cut through the snow to open the road, so we were driving past accumulated snow that was higher than Al!
After Crater Lake we headed into the Umpqua National Forest. We thought we’d probably boondock here as well, but it seems that not all national forests let you do this. I can see why they don’t in Umpqua because there aren’t really any minor roads off the highway, and they do have tons of designated camping areas anyway. We found a campground with lots of empty spaces, and parked up. Müfit paid the night’s fee – only $13 – and we would have spent some time walking around but discovered that this was mosquito-city! There were thousands of them, and they were hungry!
We spent about an hour playing the age-old family bonding game of hunt and splatter the mosquito, killing a good 15 of them that had made their way into the RV in the few seconds that we had the door open! Leland enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, but Sarah thought it was gross!
Bolgil Family Adventures 