Saying Goodbye to Crater Lake….and On to Other Things to Do

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013 – We got up this morning, had our coffee, and headed over to the Crater Lake Lodge for a nice breakfast. I really like a good cooked breakfast, and I love the Lodge atmosphere.  : )

The view of Crater Lake was awesome….The lake was mirror calm……. peaceful and serene.

After breakfast, we hitched up and headed out. Our plans are to be in Lewiston, Idaho on Thursday evening, in preparation for our rafting trip on the Snake River. We have three driving days to get there, so we can take our time.

We have several things to take care of along the way…….

While driving along the Pinnacles Road on Monday, we had a bit of a ‘close encounter’ with an RV….actually, just our mirrors. The road was narrow…..the other driver, a German couple who had rented a fairly large RV. No one realized just how narrow the road was, nor how wide the mirrors extended….until BOOM!

The mirrors must have clipped each other, shattering our driver’s side mirror, and breaking the edge of the plastic shroud. The smaller, bottom mirror was fractured, but still useable….sort-of.

We called around, looking for a replacement mirror, and set up an appointment to get it fixed in Lewiston, Idaho on Friday morning. Until then, we were only going to be traveling smaller two lane roads, anyway, and Fred felt that he could see ‘well enough’.

Another issue to be solved along the route, probably in Lewiston, also……our camper batteries have seemed to go ‘kaput’.  This was our first few nights of this trip without hook-ups, and the batteries just do not seem to be holding a charge. They are 3 years old, and we guess it is just time to replace them. An easy enough fix.

So…..a few glitches and things to get fixed…..

We drove down Mt. Mazama  and through some gorgeous Oregon countryside.

We had an easy day of driving, and arrived at the Clyde Holliday State Wayside, just west of John Day, Oregon, at about 2:30 pm.

We were delighted with the campground. Beautiful, manicured park like sites with water and electric hook-ups.

Our campsite felt like it was out all by itself, and had  a nice bit of shade working its way over the camper.

All around the campground were these two different berry producing plants. We asked a park ranger about them. The blue berries are Oregon grape which is edible but tart, may make a good jelly or wine and the red berries are choke cherry. They made for a lovely landscaping.

We kicked back for the afternoon, enjoying the campsite and the convenience of having electricity and good cell phone reception and internet (from my phone). I worked on my blog posts and caught up with my emailing. Fred spent some time planning our next few days of traveling. After dinner (hamburgers grilled on the new grill), we went for a walk around the campground and down their ‘River walk trail’.

This little river ran just in back, and behind the bushes, from our campsite.

Up at the edge of the road……..the sunlight highlighted the Oregon countryside.