September 23

Finally we see someone who has done what that bus website is talking about--but we can't see inside to see how much is RV and how much is schoolbus. Also, this is the first park we've stayed at where there is definitely some ganja bein smoked. may be eminating from the schoolbus.

Friday, Sept. 24

Our last day. We drive into Ashland and wander some shops (finding a pair of shoes for me that are 70% off!) and head to the sweet Lithia Park. Katie plays at the playground, meeting another 3-year-old girl, and we have a picnic lunch. I get in loads of trouble for forgetting to pack Mark's carrots (this is the second time this trip that I've forgotten). He needs them like oxygen, so he can't understand how my pitiful brain works (wish I could too). Despite this infraction, he offers to move the car for us so we don't have to walk back to it, and he takes us to a local shop that makes homemade ice cream (in Huge portions). Katie is now babbling through a sugar high and I am about to lapse into a deep sleep (why can't it be the other way around?), and Mark is driving us down I-5 toward the California border and home. I'm sad and glad at the same time, and he says he is too. It's been a fun trip but way too short (and maybe a bit too fast-paced). I never even started any sewing projects--keeping this site current was my only hobby, other than entertaining a toddler. But we all travelled really well together, and I could get used to sightseeing such cool places as we've seen this trip.

Here are pictures from Bend and Sisters, Oregon as well as the High Desert Museum and Crater Lake

the view on our way down Hwy 26 (Mt. Hood: the highest mountain in Oregon at almost 11,000 feet)

As soon as you leave the Mt. Hood area, the land becomes high desert. This sage, outside our RV when we stopped for lunch, reminded me of Bishop.

Smith Rock, north of Redmond, Oregon. A popular climbing spot. No climbers high up today, though.

In Bend we found a sweet RV park (Scandia), which was half as expensive as the 5-star place that Woodalls liked best.

I loved it because we had an old rock fireplace and picnic area right next to us.

It was cold in Bend. Here's Katie's bed.

At the park in Sisters, a daddy climbed this high tree.

Can you see him?

Here he is on maybe the hardest stretch.

Past Sisters on Hwy 242 you drive up to a sea of lava that erupted 1500 years ago. It is as barren as if it happened 10 years ago. Mt. St. Helens looks lush compared to this.

Mark couldn't resist climbing the pile of rocks at the scenic view of the lava sea.

Katie complained until we found a way for her to get up there too.

This is the Dee Knight Observatory, built out of the lava rocks by the Conservation Corps and Mennonite conscientious objectors in the 1930s and 40s.

Even the stairs to the top are made out of lava, and not eroded at all, after 60 years of use. This stuff is knee-scrape city, but somehow Katie came out uncut.

Katie inside the observatory

The observatory has little windows cut into it so you can see specific peaks, with plaques below each window, telling you what you are seeing.

This is the Belknap Crater, which was responsible for the latest lava flow, 1500 years ago, that created the sea of lava we see today.

This is the view from the path to the observatory. The lava is broken into TV-sized boulders and larger, and goes on for miles.

Here's a spot where the lava went between two hills, like a frozen river.

Here's stuff from the High Desert Museum:

they got 3-4 flats a day out here driving through the lava fields in 1914

an old chuck wagon

Mark & Katie checking out an otter, and vise-versa

the old fashioned RV, complete with woodburning stove

Here's Crater Lake:

This pumice desert is 7,700 years old, created by the tiny pieces of pumice that came out of Mt. Mazama. A long time for not much to grow (that's worse than my own gardening).

The first snow we drove by on this trip. Katie was much more excited about the snow than the lake.

This was our first view of the lake, as we pulled in to a rest stop.

yes, Katie you can go play in the snow

no time to stitch this pic and the next into a panorama, but you can imagine...

wizard island, which might someday grow to become the new mountaintop

The lake's first photographer built this house--it has a room that was a darkroom where he developed the first pictures of Crater Lake (around the turn of the last century I think).