Sep 1, 2012 Last updated: 9/8/12 2:00pm PT
This year’s trip was to Northeast California to visit a few national parks. This was a driving trip. We put on about 2500 miles. There were a couple of long driving days where we got saddle sore. We should have added a few more stops to break up the long driving stretches.
In California there are a bunch of national parks that are (relatively) close together. But, they are in the middle of nowhere, and California is quite large. When planning this trip, we were looking at the map and just kept saying “we’re already that far, might as well keep going”. Eventually, we ran out of time and had to turn back.
We criss-crossed the mountains many times, changing elevations a lot, up and down and up and down, from 5000 ft. to 7000 to 6000 to 8000 to 5000 to…. The Yosemite park east entrance is at 9945 ft.
On the maps page, you can see the route we took. Driving south from Seattle, we took the back roads out of Portland, OR towards Bend, OR, with day 1’s final destination of Klamath Falls, OR.
Outside of Portland is Mount Hood.
Just south of Bend is Newberry National Volcanic Monument. We did not explore the whole park. There are 3 main parts to this park. Lava Lands (adjacent to route 97), the Lava Cast Forest (after 9 miles of unpaved road), and Paulina Lake (12.5 miles off rt. 97). We just stopped at the Lava Lands visitor center to see old lava flows. There are some easy, paved trails here.
A dead twisted tree. There is so little soil available that the tree twists as it grows.
Dinner was a Wubba’s BBQ Shack. We had a half slab of baby back ribs and a half slab of St. Louis style spare ribs. It was half good and the stomach was half churning afterwards.
At the hotel, we could not get into our room after check-in. You know that little bar that flips over the peg on the door for security when you are inside the room? That was caught on the door, even though no one was in the room, so we couldn’t open the door. The woman at the front desk came up to the room with a piece of plastic, opens the door a little and inserts the plastic where the bar is, closes the door, reopens the door and presto, we are in the room. So next time you are in your hotel room and have that bar enabled and you feel all safe, keep in mind that you’re not really safe. All it takes is a piece of plastic (and the key of course).