so, ive always loved volcanoes. well, geology in general is totally fascinating (its one of three things i would major in/do as a career if i didnt love and was established in my current career. the other two being exercise physiology and hair). i even always wanted to live close enough that i could go to mt st helens when i found out about it (wow, and here i am. that reminds me i need to go again before i leave). so an
ywho, going to crater lake oregon has been on my to do list for a while. and well, time is running short here and i decided that was one thing i really didnt want to miss before i left (much less likely ill make it out there once i move to utah) so a friend and i decided last week that we were gonna make it happen this last weekend. and we did. but i really want to not forget about the experience, so here goes people. it might be a longy (this post). and i mean really really longy. well, we took off saturday morning after our 5 k race in ridgefield, wa (which was fantastic, i won a raffle and got a rad hat and a little band thing to clip my race numbers into which im so nerdily excited about cuz i hate pinning them. ive always wanted one but couldnt bring myself to actually buy one. ps, people, if you enter races with lots of slow people, its way easier to win awards. last week i won my age group in a 10k race, then at this 5 k i took 2nd in my age group and 6th overall woman! so i got a cool red ribbon, which hasnt happened since field day in elementary school. super awesome! ). the drive down was great, uneventful, good conversation, good tunes. we got to the first lookout of the lake and pulled in and WOW! seriously breathtaking. its a super intense color of blue because of the depth and purity of the lake and its just immense and strikingly steep. so we chilled and absorbed for a while, then decided we best get moving on to get camp set up and whatnot. so we ju
mp in the car, giddy and ready to go. i turn the key, and something happens that has never in my life happened. nothing. i turned the key and there was absolutely nothing happenin. not a sound, not a click, not a blasted thing. i pushed the clutch in, turned the steering wheel, jiggled myself around a little just for good measure, and tried again. about 28 more agains actually. nothing. nothing. nothing. kami (my awesome travel buddy) and i look at each other with that same unmistakeable facial expression. the one that says "frik. frikking frik. what do we do now?!?!" so we get out and pop the hood and pretend to look at it, but mostly to attract some passerby that might be a car genius and super eager to demonstrate his skills to strangers. and to look pathetic. no takers. so we wander over to the closest man, and this is how that conversation goes: Kami: "hi, excuse me, do you happen to know anything about c
ars? " Man: "nope." ...............awkward pause..... Kami: "...cuz the thing is, our car wont start and we were hoping you might be able to help us out". ya. it was awesome. so he and his wife did meander over and look at the engine and confirm that, yes, he does not know a thing about cars. but luckily by now, our ploy had worked and some young hippy rebel types overheard us and wandered over as well. well, they discovered that i apparantely had like surpassed the normal amount of corrosion anyone has ever seen on a car battery ever before in the history of car batteries. they couldnt stop talking about how much corrosion there was (it sorta looked like my battery puked, there was all this fluffy blue stuff burbling up out of the "contact" or whatever) so anywho, i luckily found that i had jumper cables in my trunk somehow (im pretty sure that dad insisted on throwing them in there when i moved out here or something. thank GOODNESS!) so we cleaned off what we could of the corrosion, hooked those babies up, and she started right up. yay!! we were good to go. so we headed off to the campground. (we had planned to backpack in off some unknown road and camp in the backcountry, but we were too late to get a permit and well, the car sitch threw a wrench into all our plans) so we got in and registered to camp for two nights at the campground which was 7 miles from the actual crater lake. well, we both held our breath as i turned the car off to try and restart it on its own, just to see if it had been some fluke. and sure enough, when i turned the key, the nothingness returned. BLAST! so we found some nice peeps, they jumped it and went on their merry way. we waited a bit, taking care of some stuff, then i went to back out to go to our campground, and talk about bad timing, i freakin stalled my car that ive had for 6 years! well, that actually happens regularly (my sissy swears i have the most horrid clutch ever, and she says its hard to get used to. so....ya. ), but ya, suck! stuck again! so it was my turn to ask someone to jump it. and there were tons of people and cars around. lots of tourists. from not america. so i slowly made my way to the closest car of young friendly looking tourists. but their door was open and i was sorta blocked and i felt silly and i opened my mouth to say something, but then they werent speaking english so i lost my nerve and just walked away. ya and they totally saw me. ridiculous. but anywho, we found some other nice guys who gave us a jump and i was very careful backing out and we were on our way again! so we went to the campsite, i backed in for easier access when we would have to get jumped when we left. we set up camp, roasted some delicious weenies with pillsbury biscuit dough and enjoyed the tranquility. pretty uneventful night, except i learned that when you just have the marshmallows and not the chocoloate and graham crackers, you can eat lots more marshmallows before getting sick
and they actually taste way better. so that was awesome. morning arrived. a glorious sunny perfect for hiking morning. so we planned on hiking up to the lake and hangin out up there then hiking or hitchhiking back to our campground if we were too tired. so we set off on the backcountry path. we had a wonderful time hiking through, beautiful scenery, we even made a snowman (high elevation so lots of patches of snow, which became significant later. oh one of the pics is of me running across the "magic glacier" cuz it was amazing and the mosquitos were so horrific everywhere on the trail except ont this patch of snow, or "glacier" as i liked to call it), we hiked for a mile on the pct (pacific crest trail) which was just lovely. then as we neared what should have been the last couple miles, it got a little trickier finding the path, cuz it was covered in snow in parts and there were several clearings and possible paths. we had seen little blue signs on some trees as we hiked, so we assumed they were trail markers so we kept looking for them. and usually found them. but then we couldnt see them at all. or a trail. but there was a stream bed/ravine to our left and it looked like a ridge of some sort up above us so we just went ahead and hiked on up towards that ridge. i thought for sure we were close to something. i got up to the ridge and looked around...and it was just a clearing. and i saw nothing anywhere near to help us get out. no blue dots, no trail, nothing. and i had a little panic moment of "crap. do i have ID on me? are they gonna find me unconcsious in the middle of this clearing? am i going to die right here?!?!" then kami turned her head to the left and said "oh. theres the road." YAY!! we did it! we freakin bushwacked our way to the lake! (well, the last quarter mile or so. :) so we hiked around and had an absolute blast. then we decided it was time to head out. and decided to try our luck on the road. so we started strolling down with our thumbs sorta carelessly dangling out, not really insistent or desparately sticking out or anything. and we didnt get too far before this very lovely jeep stopped and said "we wish so much we could help but we have kids and no room for you! sorry. " oh. k. but thanks for stopping and getting our hopes up. ya but we walked not far at all before this huge handicapped van stopped and threw open the door and there was a little square of carpet in front of the guy in his big wheelchair. so we hopped on in. i told them what had happened as we drove and they were super stoked about helping us fix our car. they were nice guys. not the most clean or well kempt, but they were our knights in shining armor that night. i went and got a coke from the store (the only thing i retained from our "car fixing" enrichment activity years ago- use coke to clean batteries) and they cleaned off the corrosion, jimmy rigged the battery connection with a screw or something and then told me to fire her up. i thought there was no way itd start on its own just after a cleaning, but it totally did!!! it was amazing and i sure learned my lesson. heres the best part. we thanked them profusely and tried to offer them money, and the guy in the wheelchair (the dad of the crew, who had been hollaring instructions from the van the whole time) yells out "gimme the towel!!"(my roommate has an awesome sham wow! lookalike thing they had been using). thats what he wanted for all their time and effort. a sham wow! (which is a FREAKIN AMAZING thing if i do say so myself). so we gave them the wanna be sham wow, hugged them all, and they were on their way. wow. goooood times. we fire roasted the weanies again (the biscuit dough got dropped in the dirt and pine needles and was beyond washing or picking dirt out) and had a delightful dinner knowing that we would not have to leave the car running everywhere we went the next day, as we had planned. oh we went to an awesome fireside chat at a little ampitheater by the campground by ranger don. he talked about solo hiking the pct and appalachain trail (the night before ranger mike
talked about how crater lake was formed which is AMAZING and sooo freakin cool but i cant do it justice on here. go research it). so pleasant and enjoyable, those old park ranger dudes. another fantastic night of delish hot chocolate and marshmallows. next morning i was overjoyed to find that the car continued to start up on its own, and BONUS! the check engine light was off! so we drove around the whole rim of the lake, hiked down to the rocky shore, dipped our feet, slept on the rocks, and just enjoyed the majestic views which are amazing. we headed home and saw a young cute hitchhiker on our way out and we thought "karma. we gotta give this guy a ride" so we did. nice guy. his name was nate. and he harvests pot with his friends when hes not hiking around the country. nice. welcome to oregon. so we dropped nate off at his little town, and had an uneventful but completely enjoyable ride home. so throughout those several days, i did lots of sweating and zero showering and felt like i was well on my way to dreadlocks. but thankfully, i just got my hair done and it survived. no dreads. for now.
ywho, going to crater lake oregon has been on my to do list for a while. and well, time is running short here and i decided that was one thing i really didnt want to miss before i left (much less likely ill make it out there once i move to utah) so a friend and i decided last week that we were gonna make it happen this last weekend. and we did. but i really want to not forget about the experience, so here goes people. it might be a longy (this post). and i mean really really longy. well, we took off saturday morning after our 5 k race in ridgefield, wa (which was fantastic, i won a raffle and got a rad hat and a little band thing to clip my race numbers into which im so nerdily excited about cuz i hate pinning them. ive always wanted one but couldnt bring myself to actually buy one. ps, people, if you enter races with lots of slow people, its way easier to win awards. last week i won my age group in a 10k race, then at this 5 k i took 2nd in my age group and 6th overall woman! so i got a cool red ribbon, which hasnt happened since field day in elementary school. super awesome! ). the drive down was great, uneventful, good conversation, good tunes. we got to the first lookout of the lake and pulled in and WOW! seriously breathtaking. its a super intense color of blue because of the depth and purity of the lake and its just immense and strikingly steep. so we chilled and absorbed for a while, then decided we best get moving on to get camp set up and whatnot. so we ju
mp in the car, giddy and ready to go. i turn the key, and something happens that has never in my life happened. nothing. i turned the key and there was absolutely nothing happenin. not a sound, not a click, not a blasted thing. i pushed the clutch in, turned the steering wheel, jiggled myself around a little just for good measure, and tried again. about 28 more agains actually. nothing. nothing. nothing. kami (my awesome travel buddy) and i look at each other with that same unmistakeable facial expression. the one that says "frik. frikking frik. what do we do now?!?!" so we get out and pop the hood and pretend to look at it, but mostly to attract some passerby that might be a car genius and super eager to demonstrate his skills to strangers. and to look pathetic. no takers. so we wander over to the closest man, and this is how that conversation goes: Kami: "hi, excuse me, do you happen to know anything about c
ars? " Man: "nope." ...............awkward pause..... Kami: "...cuz the thing is, our car wont start and we were hoping you might be able to help us out". ya. it was awesome. so he and his wife did meander over and look at the engine and confirm that, yes, he does not know a thing about cars. but luckily by now, our ploy had worked and some young hippy rebel types overheard us and wandered over as well. well, they discovered that i apparantely had like surpassed the normal amount of corrosion anyone has ever seen on a car battery ever before in the history of car batteries. they couldnt stop talking about how much corrosion there was (it sorta looked like my battery puked, there was all this fluffy blue stuff burbling up out of the "contact" or whatever) so anywho, i luckily found that i had jumper cables in my trunk somehow (im pretty sure that dad insisted on throwing them in there when i moved out here or something. thank GOODNESS!) so we cleaned off what we could of the corrosion, hooked those babies up, and she started right up. yay!! we were good to go. so we headed off to the campground. (we had planned to backpack in off some unknown road and camp in the backcountry, but we were too late to get a permit and well, the car sitch threw a wrench into all our plans) so we got in and registered to camp for two nights at the campground which was 7 miles from the actual crater lake. well, we both held our breath as i turned the car off to try and restart it on its own, just to see if it had been some fluke. and sure enough, when i turned the key, the nothingness returned. BLAST! so we found some nice peeps, they jumped it and went on their merry way. we waited a bit, taking care of some stuff, then i went to back out to go to our campground, and talk about bad timing, i freakin stalled my car that ive had for 6 years! well, that actually happens regularly (my sissy swears i have the most horrid clutch ever, and she says its hard to get used to. so....ya. ), but ya, suck! stuck again! so it was my turn to ask someone to jump it. and there were tons of people and cars around. lots of tourists. from not america. so i slowly made my way to the closest car of young friendly looking tourists. but their door was open and i was sorta blocked and i felt silly and i opened my mouth to say something, but then they werent speaking english so i lost my nerve and just walked away. ya and they totally saw me. ridiculous. but anywho, we found some other nice guys who gave us a jump and i was very careful backing out and we were on our way again! so we went to the campsite, i backed in for easier access when we would have to get jumped when we left. we set up camp, roasted some delicious weenies with pillsbury biscuit dough and enjoyed the tranquility. pretty uneventful night, except i learned that when you just have the marshmallows and not the chocoloate and graham crackers, you can eat lots more marshmallows before getting sick
and they actually taste way better. so that was awesome. morning arrived. a glorious sunny perfect for hiking morning. so we planned on hiking up to the lake and hangin out up there then hiking or hitchhiking back to our campground if we were too tired. so we set off on the backcountry path. we had a wonderful time hiking through, beautiful scenery, we even made a snowman (high elevation so lots of patches of snow, which became significant later. oh one of the pics is of me running across the "magic glacier" cuz it was amazing and the mosquitos were so horrific everywhere on the trail except ont this patch of snow, or "glacier" as i liked to call it), we hiked for a mile on the pct (pacific crest trail) which was just lovely. then as we neared what should have been the last couple miles, it got a little trickier finding the path, cuz it was covered in snow in parts and there were several clearings and possible paths. we had seen little blue signs on some trees as we hiked, so we assumed they were trail markers so we kept looking for them. and usually found them. but then we couldnt see them at all. or a trail. but there was a stream bed/ravine to our left and it looked like a ridge of some sort up above us so we just went ahead and hiked on up towards that ridge. i thought for sure we were close to something. i got up to the ridge and looked around...and it was just a clearing. and i saw nothing anywhere near to help us get out. no blue dots, no trail, nothing. and i had a little panic moment of "crap. do i have ID on me? are they gonna find me unconcsious in the middle of this clearing? am i going to die right here?!?!" then kami turned her head to the left and said "oh. theres the road." YAY!! we did it! we freakin bushwacked our way to the lake! (well, the last quarter mile or so. :) so we hiked around and had an absolute blast. then we decided it was time to head out. and decided to try our luck on the road. so we started strolling down with our thumbs sorta carelessly dangling out, not really insistent or desparately sticking out or anything. and we didnt get too far before this very lovely jeep stopped and said "we wish so much we could help but we have kids and no room for you! sorry. " oh. k. but thanks for stopping and getting our hopes up. ya but we walked not far at all before this huge handicapped van stopped and threw open the door and there was a little square of carpet in front of the guy in his big wheelchair. so we hopped on in. i told them what had happened as we drove and they were super stoked about helping us fix our car. they were nice guys. not the most clean or well kempt, but they were our knights in shining armor that night. i went and got a coke from the store (the only thing i retained from our "car fixing" enrichment activity years ago- use coke to clean batteries) and they cleaned off the corrosion, jimmy rigged the battery connection with a screw or something and then told me to fire her up. i thought there was no way itd start on its own just after a cleaning, but it totally did!!! it was amazing and i sure learned my lesson. heres the best part. we thanked them profusely and tried to offer them money, and the guy in the wheelchair (the dad of the crew, who had been hollaring instructions from the van the whole time) yells out "gimme the towel!!"(my roommate has an awesome sham wow! lookalike thing they had been using). thats what he wanted for all their time and effort. a sham wow! (which is a FREAKIN AMAZING thing if i do say so myself). so we gave them the wanna be sham wow, hugged them all, and they were on their way. wow. goooood times. we fire roasted the weanies again (the biscuit dough got dropped in the dirt and pine needles and was beyond washing or picking dirt out) and had a delightful dinner knowing that we would not have to leave the car running everywhere we went the next day, as we had planned. oh we went to an awesome fireside chat at a little ampitheater by the campground by ranger don. he talked about solo hiking the pct and appalachain trail (the night before ranger mike
talked about how crater lake was formed which is AMAZING and sooo freakin cool but i cant do it justice on here. go research it). so pleasant and enjoyable, those old park ranger dudes. another fantastic night of delish hot chocolate and marshmallows. next morning i was overjoyed to find that the car continued to start up on its own, and BONUS! the check engine light was off! so we drove around the whole rim of the lake, hiked down to the rocky shore, dipped our feet, slept on the rocks, and just enjoyed the majestic views which are amazing. we headed home and saw a young cute hitchhiker on our way out and we thought "karma. we gotta give this guy a ride" so we did. nice guy. his name was nate. and he harvests pot with his friends when hes not hiking around the country. nice. welcome to oregon. so we dropped nate off at his little town, and had an uneventful but completely enjoyable ride home. so throughout those several days, i did lots of sweating and zero showering and felt like i was well on my way to dreadlocks. but thankfully, i just got my hair done and it survived. no dreads. for now.
