Down the road & back again...: oregon

Showing posts with label oregon. Show all posts

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Favorite Vacation Photos:

I recently finished creating a folder of my favorite photos from our last vacation. There's still more than anyone would probably want to look at, plus I'd like to find out how to add a watermark before I post too many. In the meantime, I'm posting just a few more of my favorites from that trip. It's best to open them up to see the detail because some of them are kinda fun.

The brilliant sunset is taken near Crater Lake, in Oregon. If you open it you'll see a single star in the gorgeous sky.

The forest path is one that I'm thinking about using for my banner...not sure if it has enough color though

. Let me know what you think.

The lighthouse is in Crescent City, California.

The one of Terry crossing the street is pretty cool. He didn't want me to take his picture , so he thought I wouldn't be able to catch him if he ran across. If you open the picture, he's in pretty good focus compared to everything else around.

If you open the one that looks like a bunch of sand and trees, you'll see me sitting at the bottom of the hill. Terry was taking the picture from the top of a huge sand dune near the southern part of the Oregon coast! I had no idea there were even sand dunes there until this trip.

I took several of the sailboats in the moonlight on the Columbia River in Portland. There were two boats that passed in front of each other. I couldn't resist with the reflection on the water. I didn't have my tripod with me (it was in the car) so I set my camera on top of a post and used my remote to keep the movement to a minimum. Not bad for makeshift, huh.

The last one is raindrops on a branch full of leaves in Redwood National Park. I just love the way they sparkle.

Anyway, these are just a few that I thought were kinda cool.

Monday, July 30, 2007

I have some catching up to do...

As expected, we didn't have any internet access or cell phone, or TV or even land line phones on Weds thru Friday, so I wasn't able to post anything. On Friday night and Saturday we were just too busy. Here are some highlights of the last half of our vacation.

On Wednesday morning we drove about 150 miles from Crescent City, California to Union Creek, Oregon which is just about 20 miles from Crater Lake National Park. We checked in to our little cabin at Union Creek Resort and had a good chunk of the afternoon left, so we headed up to Crater Lake. These are shots from Crater Lake lodge on the veranda behind the lodge where they have about 20 rocking chairs all lined up facing a gorgeous view of the lake. Terry and I enjoyed the view for quite a while while listening to the park ranger talk about the formation of the lake.

I'll try not to bore you with too much detail, but this lake is quite unusual. It was formed from a volcano that erupted, then collapsed in on itself leaving a caldera about 6 miles wide and 4 miles long. Over the years, it filled with rain and snow runoff to create the lake that we see today. It's the deepest lake in the continental U.S. (7th deepest in the world) registering nearly 2000 ft deep at the lowest point. As you can see from the photos, it is an amazing shade of blue due to the depth and clarity of the water!

The other unusual thing is that there's only one "official" trail (Cleetwood Cove) to get to the water's edge from the top. Most of the shoreline is steep and rocky with very loose gravely pumice and other volcanic rock that's difficult to walk on. We did get a chance to hike down to the water's edge and even took a ranger-hosted 2-hour boat tour, which was so much fun! We talked about how Kevin would be so great to have as a ranger on a tour like this. Of course, he'd have to be careful not to make stuff up like he usually does. He would make an awesome ranger and guide and would be so great with all ages of people.

The hike back up reminded me of the switch-backs at Havasupai, only shorter & shadier with a nice cool breeze. We were told that the hike was equivalent to climbing 65 flights of stairs (although the sign at the top said 150 flights - not sure which is right). We decided it was good that we did it at the end of our trip after we'd been hiking easier trails most every day. Here you can see the view from the top of the trail. There's a person walking 3 levels below us on the path and the boat (which holds 20 or so people) is down in the water at the dock. The blue water photo was taken from the boat and is a reflection of the rocks in the ultra blue lake. It was amazing!

And there's so much more to talk about...Wizard Island, the Phantom Ship, Devil's Backbone, Vidae Waterfall, an eagle's nest and even the Old Man of Crater Lake. If you want to read more about these things follow the links or go to the Crater Lake website here or let me know if you want to see more pics and I'll post them somewhere.

I do have to post a pic of the Pinnacles. These formations are so bizarre. You'd never believe they were natural.

Scientists say that when the very hot ash and pumice came to rest near the volcano, it formed 200 to 300-foot thick gas-charged deposits. For perhaps years afterward, hot gas moved to the surface and slowly cemented ash and pumice together in channels and escaped through fumaroles. Erosion later removed most of the surrounding loose ash and pumice, leaving tall pinnacles and spires. You can get an idea of how tall they are by the size of the full grown trees next to them.

Well, you get the idea. There was so much to see and do. We had a great time!

Friday, July 20, 2007

ON THE ROAD AGAIN...I can't wait to get on the road again...(that's just about all I know of the song, but I love those two lines.)

WARNING - YOU MAY NOT WANT TO READ THIS IF YOU'RE HUNGRY.

So I don't want to go into too much detail, but we're sitting in our little studio condo on

the coast of Oregon, just a smidge north of Newport at Otter Rock. iGoogle tells me that the current temperature is 61 degrees, which happens to be about 35 degrees cooler than the current temperature in Phoenix. Sorry guys!

The rain is drizzling outside, which it's been doing all day long off and on. We had a little bit of a rocky start last night with a flight delay and arriving in Portland to find that the rental car office where we reserved our car had closed at midnight (before we got there). Everything worked out fine with a few minor adjustments and now we're enjoying the cool cloudy days of Oregon.

Ahhh...heaven!

The first picture above is of Terry standing beside our rental car, which happens to be an Escape Hybrid! We've been thinking about a hybrid for our next car and he got a great deal on this one, so thought it would be fun to try it out. So far we're getting around 33 miles per gallon and it does even better in the city.

After leaving Portland we headed toward the coast and made a stop in the town of Tillamook at the cheese factory. We got to see the folks dressed in white, packaging all those slabs of cheese. did you also know that Tillamook makes award winning ice cream and fudge? We were so tempted to get some Marionberry ice cream, but decided against it since we hadn't had any lunch yet.

After we checked out the assembly line, we went downstairs for a cheddar taste test. We tried medium, sharp & extra sharp yellow cheddar and a Smoked Black Pepper White Cheddar cheese which was really scrumptious!

I've never seen that one in the stores so we'll have to look for it. They have a few others up here that I haven't seen in Phoenix. After tasting, we were led into the "cheese store" where we found every shape and size of Tillamook that you could imagine; little 2 inch square snack size slices up to large blocks of all kinds. They also had lots of goodies to go with the cheese. We picked up a few items to have as snacks during the coming days and hit the road.

Well, we hit the road for a mile or so, until we saw a cute little restaurant, then finally stopped for lunch. I have photos of all of our food, but won't bore you with that. We started on our week of seafood exploration and had 2 cups of clam chowder, halibut fish & chips, and a fried oyster sandwich.

Then we drove a few more hours down to Otter Rock, checked into our hotel and decided to take a walk and do some exploring before it got too dark.

While on our walk, we went to Devil's Punchbowl (pictured) and right next door, was a little place called "Mo's". Our friend, Bruce told me that Mo's was one of the places with the best clam chowder in this part of the country, and since Terry and I didn't have any specific dinner plans, so we decided to try it out. It was this tiny little place that looked like a beach cottage had been gutted and 8 long skinny tables for 8 had been crammed inside. There was nothing smaller than a table for 8, so if you want to eat you sometimes have to share with

strangers. This was the case with our little party of two. We sat at an empty table and were soon joined by 2 women and a little boy. Of course, when you're sitting at a table together you inevitably start visiting and low and behold...the older woman is the mother of the other lady and the grandmother of the little boy. She and the little boy happen to be visiting from PHOENIX!!! And get this! She lives at 32nd Street & Thunderbird!!! Seriously! Can you believe it?

Anyway, what started out as a quick stop for a cuppa local chowda turned into this delicious meal that Terry and I shared with our new found friends from home. We had an appetizer piled high with Oregon Bay Shrimp cocktail and an amazing bowl of what they call "Slumgullion", which isn't anything like what my mom called "Slumgullion". Theirs is a bowl of delicious clam chowder, with a creamy base, perfect potatoes, and chunks of clams, but added in to the mix is a heaping helping of those wonderful bay shrimp and a little bit of butter for good measure. Oh my gosh! It was awesome!!! And on the side were two thick slices of homemade bread. No doubt, the PERFECT Oregon coast meal. Even though we shared all 3 of these servings, we were too full to try the Marionberry cobbler, so we had them pack it up for us to take home for later. What a fun Day One!!! I can't wait to see what we get to do tomorrow.