Oregon Road Trip: Crater Lake, Umpqua River, Ashland

We set out on the winding Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway the next morning and found ourselves easily distracted on the 90-mile trip to Crater Lake. The road traverses alongside the stunning Umpqua River almost the entire way to Crater Lake, which meant that we were driving in a secluded, wilderness dream and could not imagine missing a single drop of the beauty. Our intention to reach Crater Lake in one day was officially squashed as we read about the waterfalls, hot springs and hiking that awaited us along the road up to Crater Lake. 

Toketee Falls beckoned to us and we listened, making our first detour of the trip a mere 50 miles from where we started the morning. We hopped out of the car and hiked on the perfectly maintained trail until we reached the highlight of the hike, the roaring, two tiered Toketee Falls. The falls' first tier drops 40 feet into an upper pool, then crashes another 80 feet down basalt rock into another gorgeous, green-blue pool. 

Toketee Falls on the Umpqua River, Oregon

After feeling the mist of the Toketee Falls, we were eager to soak in the elusive Umpqua Hot Springs. We had read online that it is rather difficult to access, but we thought that together the three of us could figure out the cryptic maps. We read that it was a short, but steep hike up to the hot springs - which perch atop a rocky bluff that drops 200 feet to the rushing Umpqua River below. After circling the area a couple times, we jumped out of the car and started hiking on a trail that seemed to match the descriptions we had read online. An hour and a half of hiking later, we decided we were likely not on the right trail and turned back. The unintended hike may have wasted time, but it did make if feel like we actually deserved a soak in the hot springs. With new determination we found the hidden turn in the road, climbed the steep trail and found ourselves in heaven. 

The cloudy, blue-gray pools line the cliff of the mountain as they descend down to the river. The top pool boasts a temperature of 112 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a bit steamy to soak in for too long. The pool temperatures gradually decrease as you descend the mountain and we found ourselves, like Goldilocks, testing each and every pool until we found the one that was "just right." By the time we left the hot springs, the sun was beginning to set and we needed to find a place to stay the night. 

Umpqua Hot Springs

I have read that the best time of year to visit Crater Lake is from late May to mid-October when all of the roads are open, but we pressed our luck in my little Honda Civic and were rewarded with cheap hotel rooms, zero tourists, and lovely snow. After spending the night in a questionable motel, we found ourselves slowly driving up a snow covered mountain to Crater Lake. At the top, we spent a whopping fifteen, frigid minutes gazing out at the deep-blue water before heading into the gift shop for heat. 

Crater Lake is a caldera lake, which was created by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama. Mount Mazama once stood at a little under 12,000 feet, but when it exploded about 7,700 years ago it was reduced to just over 8,000 feet. Left in place of the mountain peak was now a caldera, which filled with rain and snowmelt over the years until it became Crater Lake. Reaching a maximum depth of more than 1,900 feet, Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and among the deepest in the world. 

Crater Lake National Park

Nestled along the boarder of Oregon and California, lies the friendly town of Ashland, Oregon. As we explored the town, our extreme disappointment in Eugene was suddenly replaced with visions of our future home in Ashland. Home to the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland welcomes over 400,000 visitors each year from February to October to attend plays produced by William Shakespeare. The majority of the plays take place on one of three outdoor stages and the city bustles with tourism. I kept imagining Chase having a solid career in prop design with such a theatrical culture. I imagined myself owning a farm in one of the most fertile parts of our country - where the climate is so mild that they can even grow tropical fruit! 

We ended up staying two nights in Ashland, where I was able to catch up with a friend from my days working for F.H. King at UW-Madison. Vincent is now a professor at Southern Oregon University and just as eager as always to get students interested and passionate about growing food. I had a delicious dinner with his family and noted that if we did move to Ashland, we would actually know someone in our new town. 

After a few busy days of sight seeing and hiking, we were anxious to finally cross the border into sunny California. Next on the agenda: Redwoods and wine country. 

Steamboat Springs, CO - loving the springs, loathing the rain

It’s raining, it’s pouring, I wish I was snoring. Yesterday, we found the perfect campsite. It is only $10 per night, there are only seven other campsites around us and it is located in the middle of the Rocky Mountain wilderness. We have multiple hiking trails that lead up mountains, down to fresh creeks, and along the edge of mountains so that you can see everything that is going on around you. We had scouted out the campsite the day before, only to find that it was full. We spent the night at an awful, family, pet-friendly campsite only two miles from Steamboat Springs. It was only awful, because we have become accustomed to staying in pristine wilderness, where I feel like I have to whisper at times because I don’t want to disturb the lives of the animals in the forest. This place was a different story.

So happy to be at a quiet, woodsy campsite again

We arrived late, which meant there were only three campsites left. Of course, this means they are also the three worst campsites. We picked campsite 122, thinking it was the best of the worst. Let me paint you a picture of the noise that surrounded us – standing at the front of our tent and looking to the left you will see the bathroom, the only bathroom in the campsite. Needless to say, it was a busy place. To the right of our tent was the playground, complete with screaming kids day and night. In front of us was a family with a barking German Shepard who was tied up the whole time and would tempt all the little kids to come play with him, but then leave the kids screaming when he would growl and try to wrestle them down. But, the loudest part of all arrived in six cars at 8:30pm and managed to squeeze into the two remaining campsites. A family of no less than 30 barreled out of their vehicles ready to celebrate someone’s daughter’s Quinceañera. We were in the midst of getting to know a great couple from Austria when we watched the family arrive and we both looked at one another and laughed, knowing it was probably going to be a long night. They were familiar with such noise, as they have been traveling across the U.S. in their Volkswagen van. They had encountered quite a few crazies in their countless nights parked in Walmart parking lots. Their van is the greatest way to travel across the country. The top pops up for a sleeping area, it has a cooking stove built into the body and it gets 30 miles per gallon.

The night at the pet-friendly campsite made us realize how much we wanted stillness once more in our lives, so we packed up our tent early the next morning and drove into the mountains, back to the campsite that had been full the day before. Lucky for us, there was a beautiful empty campsite waiting for us when we arrived. It was the first time on this entire trip when we knew where we were going to sleep for the night before sunset.  It felt great. We nestled our tent between a few tall pines, started a campfire and relaxed. After a delicious lunch we started to explore the trails around our mountain. Twenty minutes in we had already spotted two moose, a mother and her baby, filling up on grass near the creek. I have never seen a moose before and to have seen one in the wild was incredible. We watched the two of them for quite a while before we started hiking once again. The mountainside was in it’s prime. There were flowers everywhere we looked, violet, yellow, white, blue. The flowers were scattered amongst thick forests of birch trees. The colors looked painted into the landscape against the white trunks of the trees.

Chase had way too much fun chopping wood

After our walk we had a magical hour back at our campsite. Chase wrote a few lovely and scary poems,  I did yoga and we settled on a plan for dinner. Our magical hour came to an abrupt end when we felt the first drops of rain, just as we were chopping the carrots. We decide to scratch our dinner plan and head into town, hoping the rain would be short lived. After a delicious Tex-Mex meal we left town and went to the Strawberry Park Hot Springs, the best hot springs I have ever experienced. There were multiple pools of mineral waters that ranged in temperature from lake water to boiling hot. We tested them all and felt like we had discovered the best place on Earth. When it started to get dark, clothing became optional. We opted to keep our clothes on and felt a little prudish watching all the naked people wandering in and out of the pools. The minerals in the water made our skin and hair feel healthy and clean. It was so peaceful that I didn’t even squirm too much when I would step into a weedy, algae patch of ground. As the temperature of the air cooled down, the steam from the pools rose and engulfed us in a ghost like fog. At one point, we looked up the waterfall behind us and saw two deer drinking from the pool. We left the pool just after 10 when a game of naked Marco Polo broke out and we were a little worried about what our hands might touch under the water with so many people darting back and forth.

We fell asleep in our tent warm, clean and relaxed. As dawn started to break this morning, we heard the rain begin to fall. We kept falling asleep, hoping it would stop, but it only rained harder. As we dashed from our tent to the car in search of our rain gear, we were uncertain if our car would make it back down the dirt-road that leads up the mountain. Since I am sitting here in the library writing this, it means we did make it down the mountain. But, we are still hoping that we will make it back up to our tent today.

Clothing optional hot springs