This is a daily write up for a Road Trip that Noelle and I will be going on that will tour the PNW and Big Sky Country. I will try to post them every night or the next morning here on this page. I look forward to writing about the trip here.
6:30 am and Noelle is telling me its time to go, a big day is ahead. We finish packing the last of our food into our cooler and get it into the car. On the road we pass by familiar sights up through Northern California. We made it up to Castle Crags for our first stop. Unfortunately we only got a small glimpse of the ancient volcano. This foreshadowed our morning’s mountain visibility.
We continued undeterred on I5 up to Mt Shasta. Where we were again socked in from our views of the mountain. We will have to come back so Noey can see the peak for the first time. This did not stop us from enjoying another special part of Mt. Shasta. At the top of the Sacramento River watershed is a spring that comes from the earth, out of Mount Shasta itself. A city park is open to all to come and see the start of the Sacramento River, of course we also filled our water bottles. We can now tell everyone that we drank Sacramento River water and didn’t die! Unfiltered clear and cold water perfect.
We also decided to grab some lunch in town. We cruised to the local sand which joint called Yak. The people working there were so kind but they should have warned us about what a massive lunch we were about to order. We decided to both get their garlic asiago chicken sandwich. That sandwich was staaaaaacked with this creamy cheesy bbq combo with some shoestring onions it was delicious. It also was enough food for the two of us for the rest of the week it felt like. Which was great because we were able to snack the rest of the day! Off to Crater Lake next!
Rain then sleet then fog then snow. Not the combo we were looking for to get visibility of the lake. We arrived at the ranger station where the attendant delivered the unfortunate news that we would have no shot seeing the lake and we also not be able to swim in the lake either. “Forbidden swimming pool” said Noelle. We struck out at Castle Crags, Mt Shasta but we kept on swinging so we made the final drive up the mountain to the vista.
White out fog. Again.
We decided “hey we had all day, why not just go inside the cafe and try to give it some time.” We found ourselves in our first national park gift shop of the trip. Every time I step inside one I get overwhelmed by the absolute enormous amount of stuff they can brand for the park. We found our trinkets that we would take home to commemorate the visit and received some hope from the cashier. They told us “By 5 it should clear up”. It turned out to be a lot sooner than that. 3pm on my watch and Noëlle and I walked out to the car blasted by a snow flurry, not a good look, but we saw some folks run down from the snow embankment and were shouting for us to come see the lake!
Oh yeah the lake showed up all right. It was clear, the skies were open and we were so happy that we made it.
A perfect first day. It was peaceful there at Crater lake and it gave us beautiful vistas and hope for the rest of the trip. We drove another hour down the road to the small town of Chemult. While it is small and not a beautiful campsite or hotel it is a place to sleep for the night so we can make our way to Portland in the morning. We will finish up one last episode of Iron Chef before we hit the hay.
-Jake
