Jan 05 | Hilaree O'Neill :: Road Tripping Installation #9

By Athlete Parents

Alas, another excerpt from the never ending road trip. I left off in my last blog with hood River, Oregon; a fabulous place of water, mountains and sunshine. The hardest part of leaving Hood River, however, was that I was on my own again, just me and the two boys, our truck and our pop-up camper.

Just about all of the driving we have done on this epic journey has been on rural, single-lane backroads and going from Hood River to Crater Lake National Park was no different. I love this kind of driving but my boys were still too young to appreciate it and I often just wished I was going 80 mph on the freeway but freeways never seemed to go where I wanted to go. At any rate, our drive took a total of about 6 hours with a few stops for leg stretching and eating.

http://www.nps.gov/crla/index.htm

http://www.craterlakelodges.com/

For years, I had heard about Crater Lake National Park, about it’s incredible beauty and wildness but I really had no expectations upon arriving in the park. When we reached the first overlook I was totally blown away with how big the actual lake was and how crystal blue the water. 

We were really lucky to get a good campsite in the park. August is a busy time of year and. Although Crater lake isn’t one of the busier National Parks, I still think we were really lucky. It took a while to get the whole campsite set up. It’s tough with one person to manage all the things that go into camping plus keep an eye on two toddlers who always seem hell-bent on beating each other up.

The campsites are really pretty nice – spacious and private. The only problem was that in this part of Oregon, at this time of year, it is very dry and so the campsite was predominately covered in a lot of fine, dry dirt that my boys seem to think was amazing to throw and roll in and even eat; all things that I was helpless against stopping.

In our two days in the park we ventured on some beautiful trails and hung out along the rim with groups of other tourists. Quinn and Grayden were too small to hike the challenging trails that led down to the lake so someday we will have to make our way back. I also could only imagine coming to this park in the winter. The main lodge is open all year and I would love to stay in the lodge and ski tour all around the area. The skiing from the rim down to the lake would be incredible and the Crater Lake Lodge is simply amazing.

Our time in the park was too short but after a few days of camping with the kids I was ready to visit some more friends. Packing everything and collapsing the camper and strapping the kids into the truck was total chaos but my next stop was Truckee, CA and the Zellers’ house- good friends with two boys of their own.

Comments

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[Gary]

How lovely the kids are!

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