Trip out West - Redwoods, Crater Lake & Arrive in Portland, OR

Day 20; Wednesday, July 18th
Morning spent at the Redwoods in California

As it had rained overnight everything was bright and sparkly the next day as we headed into the Redwood forest.  After a quick stop at the Visitor Center for directions, we found our way to a lovely trail through the trees.

This was the place where they shot the Endor scenes in Return of the Jedi so I was half-expecting a speeder-bike to go whizzing by.

The trees are just amazing!  They’re simply huge!  Both horizontally and
vertically.  There’s plenty of hollowed out trees – the remnants of forest fires; you can stand right inside them.  It’s cool!

Next stop – across the Oregon border – was Carter Lake!

On our way there we drove through intermittent heavy rain storms, some of which pelted the car with hail!

At the lake itself you could see the hail clustered in little white piles under the eaves of buildings.  Kind of a creepy sight in the middle of July!

Bad weather aside, Crater Lake was gorgeous!  Granted, the overcast conditions did nothing to accentuate the bright blue of the deep water, but even so, it was amazing. 

The rain though had one advantage: absolutely stunning rainbows!  And what could be more pretty than Crater Lake draped in a bright, colorful rainbow!?

Originally we had planned to camp up at Crater Lake, but with a 30% chance of rain showers (it felt like a much higher probability to us!) and a forecast of about 34° that night – we decided it best to head out from there.

Turns out Rick didn’t feel like stopping and we went straight to his sister’s house, getting in at around 11:00 that night.  Fortunately Diana was still awake!  She’d just gotten back from walking the dogs and she was absolutely thrilled to see us (even if it was two days early!).  Being that Diana’s daughter – Laura – was at summer camp, we were put up in her room for the night.  We’d reached the end of our travels!