Laundry night

As I'm writing this post, Lisa is folding our laundry in scenic Reno, NV. Actually, we don't know how scenic, or not, it is because we pulled in after dark, which made the fires on the hills that much more spectacular. We started in Portland this morning and drove up the Columbia River to see the second-tallest, year-round falls in the United States, Multnomah Falls, which sits at the base of Mt. Hood. It's two sets of falls, the upper is 542 ft, and the lower is 69 ft. Tomorrow we'll being seeing Yosemite Falls (hopefully they are still flowing) which is taller, but not year-round. Anyway, Multnomah was quite a sight to see, and if we had more time, I'm sure we would have hiked to the top. Instead we did a mini-hike to a bridge above the lower falls, looking at the upper falls. It's a really great vantage point to see both the upper and lower falls, as well as out to the Columbia River.



After Multnomah Falls, we drove back through Portland (cool looking city by the way, wish we could have seen more!) on our way to southern Oregon. Crater Lake National Park was our next stop. It wasn't a park we had set out to see in the beginning like Yellowstone and Glacier, but since it was on the way, why not take this National Parks Pass for a spin?! Outside the park we stopped for lunch and noticed the building was covered in...Moths? Yes, huge moths. Needless to say, Lisa had a tough time getting her lunch down. And apparently this was a very light moth year...

So on to Crater Lake, which is basically an old, previously erupted volcano that left a giant divot in the earth. Snow and rain eventually filled it and there you go. It's actually the deepest lake in the US and doesn't have any streams that flow in or out of it...it just filled up. The coolest thing about Crater Lake was the snow everywhere and the color of the water, just a magnificent deep blue. In some of the pictures you'll be confused as to if you are looking at water or sky....but it's water.



From Crater we drove south into California where gas was $3.33, after seeing it in Oregon for $2.72 at one point. Thankfully I filled up before we crossed the border. We cut across the top of Cali and entered Nevada around Reno. Mileage on the Car is sitting at about 4850. Tomorrow, we're skipping Lake Tahoe due to wildfires and time, and just heading south to enter Yosemite from the East and travel across Tioga Pass to Yosemite Falls and then south to the Mariposa Grove. We'll be staying in Fresno tomorrow night. Hopefully we'll be able to post.
John and Lisa