The sacrifices for the sacred lake

Our boat tour guide to Wizard Island told us about how Native Americans believe that Crater Lake is sacred ground.  He asked us to contemplate on how the lake is sacred to us and what sacrifices we have made for the lake.  Here are some of our sacrafices:

1. No internet access for 4 days.

2. A steep hike up and down Cleetwood Cove to reach the boat.

Cleetwood Cove trail is the only way to access the lake.  It is the steepest trail in the park and it has a 700 foot elevation loss/gain in less than a mile.  Here is an elevation profile and topo map from our hike down.

Here is the track for our boat ride to Wizard Island.

 Crater Lake is much more a mirror lake than Mirror lake in Yosemite. It is also much clearer than Clearlake.

3. Rocky hike to the top of Wizard Island.  Here is a "Harry Potter" type tree on the island next to a muggle.

The views of the lake from Wizard Island were spectacular.

It was also cool to see the caldera in the middle of the island.

Here is our hike on Wizard Island.  The caldera is visible in the middle.

4. Pesky ground squirrels on Wizard Island that try to steal your food.

The boat tour took us to a waterfall cascading down the caldera into the lake.  Andreas spotted a deer trying to reach the waterfall. 

5. Getting hailed on...Sacrifices totally worth it.

Flowers, Falls, and Fantastic Views

We started out the day at Castle Crest Trail which is a spring-fed wildflower garden. It had an amazing assortment of beautiful flowers, or as Andreas put it "this looks like Germany in the Spring."

 We also stopped by Plaikni Falls which is a pretty and easily accessible waterfall.

Our boat tour was canceled for the day due to thunder storms.  We saw so many bikes riding the rim we decided to give it a try.  We had a fun bike ride from Rim Village to Watchman Overlook.

We then hiked up to Watchman Peak.  We had to trek through some snow on this trail. Snow in late August?

The views at Watchman Peak were fantastic.  Here is the elevation profile for our hike up and down Watchman Peak.

However, we only were on the peak for a short time because a ranger told us that a big lightening storm was on the way.  We quickly took this shot from the peak and then headed down.

 And no sooner had we gotten down were we hit with a hail storm. 

Andreas hoped that the hail storm would also mean that we would see a rainbow.  We were delighted to see a double rainbow after returning to Rim Village.  What a way to end the day!

World's Easiest Kayaking: Rocky Point Resort Upper Klamath Lake

We enjoyed kayaking at Rocky Point Resort.  It was beautiful with lots of wildlife (Great Egrets, White Pelicans and Western Grebes) and so much easier than kayaking on Clearlake. There were no motor boats and no wind! We think this looks (below) like it should be a tourism photo for Rocky Point Resort.

 Notice the white pelican next to Juliette (on the right) and the white pelican family in the next shot.

One other potential tourism photo:

Here are the tracks from our kayaking trip (1.8 miles/3 km) in Pelican Bay. 

Up: Hot Air Ballooning near Ashland

We had a blast hot air ballooning near Ashland, Oregon even if it meant getting up at 5 am.  Our pilot (Ed) had us assist in the set up and take down of the balloon.   Here is a link to his webpage:

http://hot-airballoons.com/

He showed up with a small trailer which carried the balloon, basket and propane tanks. It was amazing that everything for our flight fit in such a small space.


Ed has a "top end" balloon with lots of redundancy such as two burners. Here is Ed testing the two burners.

A loud fan is used to initially inflate the balloon.

Any tangles our wrinkles then need to be smoothed out.  Here is a photo of us inside the balloon with Ed smoothing out the balloon.

Finally we are ready for the flight.  We were wondering where are the sandbags?  Turns out sandbags are only used for helium balloons.

We went up quickly with nice views of Mount Shasta.

The cows (black dots) sure looked small.

The landing was smooth, but Andreas had to get out of the balloon so the load would be lighter and we could jump the balloon over an electrified cow fence.  That was quite fun.  

We helped flatten the balloon with a "balloon hug" which means to sit on the balloon to remove excess air.

Here are the tracks of our hot air balloon adventure.  Thanks to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ . 

Oregon Caves National Monument

We enjoyed the cool (44 F/5 C) temperature inside Oregon Caves National Monument.   These caves make the caves at the Pinnacles seem like gopher holes. They are impressive.

The most impressive rooms were paradise room (see above) and  the ghost room (see below).  The rocks in the ghost room are fluorescent and the glowing part looks like a ghost.

The end of our first real caving adventure.

Big Trees Little Falls (Trillium) and Little Round Doors

We saw some really big old growth Redwood trees on our hike to Trillium Falls.

Trillium Falls looked really small compared to the big trees.

We also saw large cloves (Sorral) which sometimes were purple.

At Patrick's Point State Park we visited a replica Native American Yurok Village named Sumeg (for everlasting).  The village had several houses, a dance floor, changing room and a sweat lodge.  The Yurok's still use the village for ceremonial purposes. The houses had small round doors.  They are designed so people can get in, but bears cannot.

There was also a Yurok canoe carved out from a Redwood tree that we were allowed to sit in.  One huge canoe.

 At Patrick's Point we came across a cute rabbit with no fear of people.

As we returned to the campground, we also saw a herd of Elk grazing in Elk Meadow.

Prairie Creek Redwood Bike Ride

Our first tour of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park was an adventurous 19 mile mountain bike ride.  Here is a photo of us before the ride (nice and clean).  Our first impression of the park was wow! Look at those large trees and everything is covered in moss (including pay phones).   This place must get a lot of rain.

After a thrilling ride straight down Ossagon Trail to the beach we discovered that the Coastal Trail is covered with beautiful purple flowers.

We also discovered that sand in bike tires = flat tires.  Luckily, Andreas was prepared and he fixed Juliette's bike on the fly.

The Coastal Trail was listed as an "Easy" bike ride...This listing is slightly out of date.  The trail was in disrepair in some portions.  Here we had to lift the bikes up 6 feet over a eroded section of the trail.

 Elk aren't supposed to come out during the day, but this one was eating early in order to get the Senior discount.

Unlike the Bay Area we found the trail quite deserted and we had this waterfall to ourselves.

Fern Canyon, on the other hand, was over run with people.  It really does look like Jurassic Park.

Covered in mud and very glad to have warm showers at our campground.

Those very large Redwood Trees interfered with our GPS tracking of the bike ride, but here is what we were able to map.