ROAD TRIP

July 1, 2009- We knew today was going to be a fun day. We had heard so much about Crater Lake in Oregon and we were finally going to see it. We drove through the rest of the redwoods which led us into Oregon. Right across the border we kept seeing signs for a world famous cat exhibit. When we were driving past, there was just a fence around a dirt baseball diamond. WOW! World famous. Then we stopped because being pregnant you take every chance you can get to go to the bathroom. Check out the fly on top of the bathroom along with the massive fly swatter for the little key. What a nice welcome to Oregon. We continued on to Crater Lake. There was still a lot of snow up there but the weather was perfect. We could not believe how beautiful it was. The mosquitoe population was just as intense as the blue of the water. We hiked around for awhile but Kent had bites all over that looked like little welts. So we called it a day and went to go find a place to camp. You can camp anywhere in a National Forest so we just kept pulling over trying to find a good place. The problem one may ask...mosquitoes had multiplied and replenished where we had been looking. We finally found one after awhile but wouldn't let Benson get out of the car. Trying to cook our chili dogs, which we thought would be fast, seemed like an eternity. I put our drinks in the car to grab plates and get back in real fast but Benson allready had taken a drink of the grape juice and the cup didn't make it all the way back in the cup holder. When Kent got in the car as fast as he could since he had even more bites now, he turned the car on, and a bag of all our stuff went flying all over the ground. Benson had turned on the wipers while sitting in the car. We never did finish dinner because we were laughing and going crazy over the mosquitoes. Chemult,OR...never again.

July 2, 2009- We woke up with surprisingly no mosquitoes but still decided to pack fast to avoid a problem later. Bathing with a tub of warm water was interesting to say the least. We drove past Mt. Hood, OR to get a glimpse of another volcano and ate lunch at a park off the side of the road. Benson had a great time. We then made our way to the Columbia River Gorge. Definitely made it to our top 10. There were a lot of waterfalls in that area so we went on a few small hikes then made our way up the 17 miles of winding road for another hike to see 5 volcanoes at once. They are Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier in Washington. In Oregon, they are Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson. We were actually able to see all 5 because the weather was perfect. Finding a camping spot near Vancouver and Portland was going to be hard so we decided to try Paradise Point State Park. We got there 5 minutes before they closed and they had a primitive site available which is exactly what we wanted.