Live to ski

In the morning it was quite chilly until the sun actually hit out camping spot. After breakfast we drove up to Paulina peak to enjoy the view of the old crater and lava flow. On the road just before Bend, OR, we drove up a cinder cone and looked at yet another lava flow field. So much lava…. We stayed at the Tudor Inn which we found on Airbnb. It was a really nice place with a real shower.

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In the morning we took down our tent and enjoyed a coffee in the sun at the Crater lake lodge. Afterwards, we started driving North. At East Lake in Newberry NM it was so nice that we decided to camp there instead of driving on to Bend. We got a camp sport right at the beach. We had rice and tomato sauce for dinner.

Today we visited Crater Lake. The lake is just amazing. You drive up through the forest without any view and all of a sudden you end up at the rim of Crater lake with the lake lying several hundred feet below you. We decided to drive around the rim counter-clock wise. At Sun Notch we walked to the view point to take a look at the Phantom ship. The views were just stunning. On the North rim we hiked down to the lake (Cleve wood cove) and took a swim in the freezing cold, but refreshing, water. The hike up was pretty warm in the afternoon sum. Along the drive we saw some smoke from the remaining forest fires to the West and North. We enjoyed dinner at Crater Lake Lodge before heading back to our tent.

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Today we visited the caves of Lava Beds NM: Valentine cave, upper and lower Sentenial cave, Sunshine cave and Skull cave. These caves are lava tubes. In the lava field some lava gets cold and freezes while other lava continues to flow in these tubes. At one point the lava flow source stops and leaves tubes in the lava. Some of them are pretty impressive. One finds tubes with almost completely smooth surfaces and an almost rectangular cross section. We were amazed!

After some lava tubing, we drove northwards past Klamath Falls to the Mazama campground in Crater Lake National Park. On the way, we saw an old harvester machine next to Tule lake. North of Klamath Falls we wanted to stop for lunch at a lake but there were so many bugs (mainly mosquitoes) that we decided to eat in the car. It was so hot that we had to keep the car running for the air conditioning.

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On day 2 we first left for Burney Falls State Park where Kathrin had a swim in a beautiful lake. Afterwards we visited the falls and hikes the small falls loop which was pretty. We then drove up North. We did not follow the suggestion of our navigation device but took some small logging roads. This slowed us down quite a bit but we were rewarded with a nice obsidian cone and a the beautiful Meicine lake for lunch break. In the evening we finally arrived at Lava Beds National Monument where we pitched our tent. We had rice for dinner and enjoyed the stars after a gorgeous sunset.

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