Bend - Crater Lake - Redding - Sacramento

Bish and the girls found this saying somewhere along the way in our travels and think it should be our motto!

We arrived into Bend, OR mid afternoon on July 11th, and promptly started touring around downtown to some of the local micro breweries!  We hit Silver Moon, Deschutes, and Bend breweries and snacked at each spot.  It was fun to hang out last at Bend Brewery as it was right along the river at dusk.

The Slackettes caught up with one of their O'Donnell cousins in Deschutes Brewery!

The next day, we went out to Mt. Bachelor and went up the mountain on the chair lifts.  We had lunch up there (terrible service!), but the wrong food I got was good!  Bish and Darby hiked down the mountain, and Danica and I took the chair lift back down.  We then headed over to the Old Mill area to kick around, and I eventually went into downtown to have a beer with an old friend from Verrado, Bill Morris, who now live sin the area.  It was fun to see him and catch up.  We took it pretty easy that night since we had to get up and moving early the next morning for Crater Lake.

On top of Mt. Bachelor

We left Bend early (8 am for us) on Friday, July 13 headed for Carter Lake.  It was a relatively easy drive down to CL on Hwy 97.  We passed some sort of big lava display/park/site to visit, but did not pull off as we were on a schedule.  If you have never been to the NW US, they refer to all of the inactive volcanoes as the "ring of fire."  A lot of this area was formed by volcanoes erupting in the past.  And most (probably all) of the highest peaks are volcanoes - Mt. Hood, Mt. Bachelor, Mt. Adams, Mt. Ranier, Mt. Saint Helens, etc.  And of course, Crater Lake was formed due to a volcano too!  The lake is the deepest one in the US - 1943' deep!

At Crater Lake

Bish had arranged for a boat tour around CL.  The idea seemed really cool, until I learned that we had to hike down and back UP to do the boat tour!  From the parking area, it was a 700' elevation change to get down to the lake level!  The good news, is it wasn't really that bad, and I'm still alive to type this blog!  Our boat tour was at noon, and we got down to the lake level around 10:45 am or so and had a small picnic lunch with some sandwiches we had stopped to get at Subway.  CL was absolutely beautiful!  The variety of blueish colors were fascinating to see.  I guess they originally allowed outside boats onto the lake, but stopped that practice years ago to try and not contaminate the water with outside inputs.  So the NPS runs the place, and offer the only boat tour available.  Our park ranger, Alan, that gave the tour was from Lewes, DE but was not a fan of Nicolbolis! (heathen!)  So the mountain blew it's top 1000s of years ago, and then a small island formed in the middle of the lake from the volcanic cone inside and has a small crater on top of it, hence the name of the lake.  The high sides of the lake are actually a caldera, not a crater.  The highlight of the boat ride (for me) was getting to see the "old man in the lake!"  Which is a 30'-40' long tree trunk that has been floating around the lake vertically for 123 years.  They cannot explain why it floats vertically instead of horizontally, but about 4' of it sticks up out of the water.  You can see the bottom of it based on how clear the water is.  I guess it moves around the lake with the wind, and some people say you can predict the weather based on where it is in the lake!

It was a Villanova kind of day at Crater Lake!

After our hike back up the hill, we headed South towards Redding, CA for the night.  We have some friends who come down to AZ every spring to watch the Dojers in spring training.  Some of them live in the Redding, CA area, so we got together with them for dinner.  It was nice to see the Visser clan and to catch up with them a bit!

The Slackettes and Brooke's kids hanging out in Redding on the Sundial Bridge.

On Saturday morning, we headed towards Chico, CA to stop and have lunch with my friend Jeff's parents, Jim & Judy Roberts.  We don't get to see them often, and Jim has dementia (Alzheimer's I believe?), so it is kind of bittersweet to see them as he is slowly fading away upstairs.  In many respects, he is still the same person we have known for years - jovial, chatty, inquisitive, etc., but he often does not remember that he asked you the same quesiton just 2 minutes earlier.  The girls were great sports with Jim and answered his questions again, and again, and again many times.  I know it has to be tough on my buddy Jeff to watch his dad fade away as Jeff and his dad have had the closest father -son relationship of anyone I know.  Jeff sees the humor in it, as he occasionally will call me up with a good "dad story!"

The "two" old men on the lake!

After lunch in Chico, we drove down to Sacramento, CA for the night.  We got together with Nunzio and Michele, as well as Bish's friend Jill from HP and her family for dinner in downtown Sac.  We all met for drinks, and then dinner at Mikuni's!!!  On Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast with my friend Mark and his new bride Jennifer.  It was nice to meet Jennifer and to catch up with Mark.  On our drive up to Lake Tahoe, we stopped and said hi to Bob and Andrea in Colfax before heading up the mountain.

Slackettes posing in some store in Bend.

Slackettes with another teepee!

Slackettes visiting "Mecca" aka Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico!