Crater Lake

When I awoke in the morning, the car thermometer registered 36 degrees, but there was frost on my tent fly, so it must have been even colder than that during the night. I had slept in the back of the car, which I do by moving everything out of the trunk and folding down the back seats. I still put up the tent as a storage place for some of the nonfood items in the trunk. The morning was still so cold that my hands went numb from the process of folding the tent and getting everything back in the car. At one point I had to take a break and sit in the car with the heater on for a while until my hands thawed. When I started this trip I was grateful that the air conditioner worked so well. Now I'm grateful that the heater works so well!

Once on the road, I drove thru the Winema National Forest and up to Crater Lake. I stopped first in the Visitors Center to ask about the patches of brown earth that I saw beside the road on my drive there. The park ranger explained that this was pumice from the earlier volcanic explosion and the even now 100,000 years or so later, it was so hard that nothing would grow on it.
The park ranger also told me a little about the lake:
"And you can even go for a swim in it."
"Must be pretty cold,"
"Yep, it wouldn't be a long swim, but it quickens the heart."
I decided that my heart didn't really need any quickening and passed up the swim.
Along the way I also stopped to check out the red flowers along the roadside; it turned out that the red was from the leaves; the flowers had already died off.
Crater Lake was beautiful and well worth the drive. The lake resulted from a volcano which had exploded and imploded a hundred thousand years ago (more or less) and left this huge crater which became a lake.

While I was there I struck up a conversation with a motorcyclist who was standing beside me admiring the lake.
"This is my first trip here," he said, "even tho I've lived all my life just 60 or 70 miles from here. This is also my first real trip on this motorcycle. I promised myself if I lost a hundred pounds, I'd buy myself a big motorcycle. I lost the hundred pounds and I bought this motorcycle back in May, and here I am. I also had a heart attack a few months ago, and it really got me thinking."
"I can see where it would do that," I said.
"Yep, my next trip is to Mt. Rushmore."
I mentioned that I had been to Mt. Rushmore recently and that, "You should be sure to take the audio tour for just five bucks. It gives you a real good picture of the political and the artistic story of the monument."

I drove Route 62 and continued on my way south. After a careful look at the calendar and my itinerary, I decided that I would have to skip Yosemite and Redwoods National Park and just take the coast road instead. It was a bit of a disappointment, but I guess ten weeks just wasn't enough to see it all. In any case, I have already seen a fair number of redwood trees and would see more on the way to the coast.

Along the way I saw a hitchhiker! I have not seen one of them in years. I thought briefly about stopping for him, but I didn't. He was a middleaged man, bigger than me, and the truth is that I was afraid. It probably would have been just fine and provided me with some interesting company, but the perception is, I guess, stronger than the reality. I suppose that's why there are hardly any more hitchhikers. We've all become afraid of each other - whether we are the hitchhiker or the driver.

Late in the day I found the Siskiyou Lake Campground, a few miles off Rt. 101. It's the only campground I've ever been to where they showed a free movie at night. I was curious and went to see it. It was pretty much a kids cartoon movie about an elephant, a tiger, and a cartoon animal who rescue an Indian baby and return it to his parent, but it was just about right for me after a long day of driving and I watched the whole thing - alone - the amphitheater was completely empty except for me. Actually, the whole campground was fairly empty. I guess most of the kids in this area are back in school now.
It was dark by the time I got back to my campsite, but I still made myself a good dinner by the light of my electric lantern. I don't like to go to bed hungry. It was too much trouble, however, to set up my tent in the dark,so I just slept in the car.