Sisters, OR

We’re 4 miles from Sisters in Cold Springs FS Campground.  The flora is primarily 2^nd growth ponderosa pine with some grass here and there, interspersed with sage brush.  It’s naturally park-like, ½ dappled shade, ½ sunny, very pleasant setting.   It’s really inexpensive with our Old Fart Card, $7 a night.  This is high desert country, very low humidity, hot days, chilly nights.  The terrain around Sisters is flat but to the west the view is magnificent: numerous snow-tipped peaks are visible, including Bachelor, The Sisters, 3 Fingered Jack, Jefferson and Washington. 

The view looking southwest from the west end of Sisters.

I bought a new smartphone at Costco a week ago, an LG Lucid.  It was a frustrating piece of junk so I returned it and got a Motorola Razr Maxx, which is top-rated by Consumers Reports.  It was well worth the bucks, had everything switched over and downloaded within a couple days.  Meanwhile, Trish scored big time at the quilt fabric sale at Joann’s; she’s been salivating over this sale ever since she first heard about it several days ago. 
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The above-mentioned stores are in Bend which has a population of 80K; Sisters is much smaller, 3K or so - but pretty darn cute.  Most businesses have old west names, a restaurant called Bronco Billy’s for instance.  False front buildings abound.  It’s what one might call cowboy chic.  We've been here 3 nights, heading out tomorrow.

Crater Lake

Note the Pumice Castle rock formation in upper right.

It’s been about 27 years since I was last here with niece Mary Kay and her brother Steve.  We did a loop, leaving from my home in Beaverton, going down the OR coast and then cutting over to Crater Lake.  We were tent camping and one of my favorite memories is the night we set up camp in the dark near Klamath Falls.  We weren’t aware that our tent was virtually under a train trestle.  A train barreled over the trestle in the wee hours of the morning and scared the crap out of us.  Mary Kay sat straight up, rudely awakened from a sound sleep, and hollered, “What’s that?!”  Makes me chuckle every time I think about it.

Crater Lake was created 7000 years ago when 12,000’ Mt Mazama collapsed from its own weight.  Numerous eruptions over 400,000 years built up the mountain and as the lava flowed out, it created a honeycomb of vertical and horizontal tubes and vents.  The collapse must have made one hell of noise; imagine millions of tons of rock falling 1.5 miles - that’s the distance between the pre-collapse summit and the deepest point in the lake.

The lake is 6 miles across at its widest point and contains 4.9 trillion gallons of water.  We’re gonna need a lot more guys and a lot more buckets to empty it out and confirm that the above figure is accurate.  The guys have to be agile to carry the buckets over the rim to empty them out.  You see, the rim ranges from 507’ to 1978’ above the lake surface and the slope is 45 degrees plus.  I’m not gonna volunteer to be one of the bucket guys but I’ll gladly supervise.  Just get me a comfortable chair, find a nice shady spot and a cold 6-pack of IPA and I’ll be all over it.  On 2^nd thought, make it a case of IPA.  And some chips.  This is gonna take awhile.

PS: For many years I was a member of a Portland-based mountaineering club that was named after this mountain.  To become a member you had to take a course that included rappelling, bare rock climbing, belaying, etc, and summit a glaciated mountain.  The Mazamas had over 2000 members, was started about a 100 years ago.  They have a big lodge near Timberline on Mt Hood, great outfit.

Farewell Bend Campground

Watson Falls

Top of Watson Falls at 10X zoom.

This falls is on the North Umpqua, a ½ mile from hiway 138, which we traversed from Roseburg eastward.  It’s 273’ high.

Farewell Bend

This is a USFS campground in the Rogue Nat’l Forest, bordering the upper Rogue at 3400’ elevation, 10 miles west of Crater Lake NP.  Our campsite is right beside a mini-gorge where the river channels down from 40’ wide to 3’ at the narrowest point.  The rock faces in the gorge are sculpted and polished by the roaring, boiling water.

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Down the road 4 miles is a much larger and deeper gorge, with a flow rate of 410,000 gallons per minute.  How did they determine that?  Let’s see:

            A.  Build 2 coffer dams ¼ mile apart, with a large lift gate in the upstream dam.  Open the lift gate for 1 minute.  Have 10,000 guys line up between the coffer dams, each with a 5 gallon pail.  They bail out all the water, each guy keeping a careful tally on his bucket count.  When the bailing is all done you add up the tally and there you have it.  Piece of cake.

            B.  Use the coffer dams but replace the 10,000 guys with a couple generators and pumps.

            C.  Measure average depth, width and flow rate, do the math.  Least expensive method but not nearly as much fun to contemplate.

Nearby is Natural Bridge where the river disappears underground and travels through a lava tube.  It’s a beautiful area with towering Douglas Firs and the weather is perfect.  Many thanks to Doug and Jan for steering us to this area, and to Trish for cancelling our Crater Lake campground in favor of this one.  Not only is this campground more appealing, it costs 1/3 as much.  The private concessionaire at Crater Lake doesn’t accept the Golden Passport card (fondly known as the Old Fart Card) which provides with ½ priced camping in most federal campgrounds and free entry into national parks.

There’s another park named Farewell Bend; it’s on the Snake River on the OR/ID border.  At that point, the Oregon Trail pioneers split up, some continuing westward to the Willamette Valley, while others hung a left and headed south to CA.  I don't know why this park has the same name; I'll get back to you on the name origin.

Roseburg, OR

We stopped in Roseburg for 3 days, camped in the Douglas County Fairgrounds beside the Umpqua River.  Many towns use part of their fairground acreage for camping, which makes a lot of sense.  Some fairgrounds may get lots of use besides the fair itself but many don't.  The nightly fee is $20 with full hookups, a good rate.  It's kinda noisy though.  The freeway is 1/4 mile away, as is the grandstand and racetrack; they've had car races or time trials the last 2 nights.

Parked beside us is a large old travel trailer, occupied by a small 40ish woman who has 6 dogs and an unknown number of pigeons or doves.  She has a large crew cab pickup with a custom animal carrier like a dogcatcher or humane society rig.  The dogs and doves spend the night in/on the pickup, dogs inside, doves on top in ventilated plastic crates.  She drives the pickup away every morning, returning in the evening.  We haven't talked to her, have no idea what she does with all the critters although we're curious.

This is the home of Umpqua ice cream, a brand you've probably never seen or eaten unless you've lived in one of the west coast states.  It's very good stuff, a premium brand.  And it's hormone-free.  No doubt that's reassuring to the hormone-phobic gang.  I'm not a member of that gang.  There's enough food caveats out there to scare the crap out of everybody in the universe.  If you tried to follow all the guidelines you'd starve to death in short order.  If the skeeters don't get you, the gators will.





 

Inland

We're heading inland.  Again.  Damp, dark, cool and foggy just doesn't do it for us, regardless of our fondness for the coast and seafood.  We're lopping off 6 days of our planned stay at Bullards Beach SP, and heading eastward to warmer, drier, sunnier.

Part of our aversion to the coastal climate is the humidity.  Everything's damp most of the time, especially if it's outside.  Things take forever to dry out, bath towels for instance.  The other thing is joints: keeping them lit is a challenge.  No, no, no.  Shame on me.  I'm talking body joints here, as in hips and knees.  Old joints like ours prefer warm, dry weather. 

But, come to think of it, our joints would probably feel just fine after indulging in a couple of those other joints.  I'm really just speculating about the light-em-up type joints, never having indulged in same.  Well ....... I did try one once.  Didn't inhale, though.

Buttpains

Buttpain Number 1
RV and marine batteries are the deep cycle type, engineered to provide low levels of juice over an extended period.  Vehicle batteries are different: they provide the big jolt needed to start a car engine.  Trish says RV batteries last about 3 years.  And that's exactly how long ours lasted.  Our old batteries went teats up the 2nd week out.  Luckily, there was a Costco on our route so we got 2 new batteries at a good price.  Changing out the batteries is not a big deal but a buttpain nonetheless.

Buttpain Number 2
We didn't have power hookups for the first part of our trip so we charged things up (computers, cell phones, etc) with the generator every 2-3 days.  Also, the Tacoma has an AC outlet near the back of the bed so we can use that to charge things while driving.  I use a cordless driver to lower and raise the 4 stabilizer jacks on the EDGE.  That battery has to be charged also, so I carry the charger along when we travel.  There's an electrical engineer amongst the blog followers and I'll bet he knows where this is going.  Right, MJK? 

I plugged the cordless driver charger into the Tacoma AC outlet, inserted the driver battery and boogied on down the road - and killed the battery charger deader than a doornail.  Where did that saying come from?  Are doornails deader than, say, shingle nails?  What's a doornail, anyway?  Next time I'm in ACE hardware, I'm going to ask, "Where's your doornails?  Are they dead?"

Sears in Fort Bragg had a replacement charger.  I bought one, took it out of the box and notice this little tag on the cord, near the plug.  Tag says, "Do not plug into a converter.  The charger will be damaged."  No shit?  Sometimes it pays ($45 in this case) to read the warnings and cautions; I assume the old charger had the same warning.

Buttpain Number 3
We put new tires on the EDGE just before we left LHC in late June.  Upon arriving in Bandon, I discovered one of the new tires had a nail in it - a doornail, no doubt.  The nail was in the sidewall, not the tread area, so the tire was toast.  We hoped to replace the tire with one of the same brand but they didn't have one in Bandon; called Costco, where we bought the tires, no go: they don't ship tires.  We called around, found one at the Tire Factory in Coos Bay, so we drove up there yesterday to get it mounted.  Upon arrival, we discovered they'd lied or screwed up, new tire was brand X.  We had them mount it anyway, dicked around long enough.

Buttpain Number 4
Actually this pain was a little higher, anatomically speaking.  Whilst cleaning the RV floor, Trish's back went out.  There she was, flat as a pancake, just inside the door, afraid and/or unable to move without assistance.  It was lucky that Carina was here: she's a licensed massage therapist.  Carina worked on Trish for about 1/2 hour, got her scraped up off the floor.  Then, Carina put up a canopy, put her massage table inside and labored on Trish for another 90 minutes.

Now, it's 4 days later and Trish is much better but still walking v-e-r-y slowly.  Been there, done that, don't envy her a darn bit.

Bandon, OR

We’re at Bullards Beach SP for 2 weeks.  It’s 3 miles north of Bandon, OR, a really neat coast town of 3000, with a boardwalk along the water.  There are all kinds of large woodcarvings and one of a kind wood benches that are really works of art.
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My niece Carina joined us here for 3 nights, camping in the backpack tent she bought from me a while back.  Trish’s brother Doug and wife Jan are here also, staying 6 nights.  Party time at the coast. 

Here are a few shots of the boardwalk art.

Think of all the time and effort it took to carve this little beastie.

  

That's a big crab on the left.

Dueling cameras.  The lady in the gray directly above the turtle is Carina, my niece.

The paintings attached to the railing were done by local artists and middle school kids.

The theme is The Year of the Dragon.

Must be over 100 paintings.