mt hood

I’m a day late posting this blog… Very apologetic but you’ll understand why soon.

I woke up in Cali (yeah I’m cool and can say Cali now) around 6am. I honestly didn’t want to get out of the hammock. It sleeps better than most hotel beds. Knowing I had an adventure in front of me I squared up, put my shoes on and proceeded to get out of the hammock. Well or so I thought. I actually ended up tumbling out of it somehow. Yeah, I still don’t know.

Any who, with my pride still on the ground I picked myself up and made breakfast. Which consisted of some Black Rifle Coffee and Oatmeal. I guess I’m a creature of habit. While waiting for breakfast to cool down I started Googling things to do in Oregon, which was my next stop. I found a website with the 7 wonders of Oregon. A couple of them were close to my route so I said what the heck. Let’s go!

My first stop was Crater Lake. Yeah I didn’t know anything about it so I’ll give you a little history lesson… Crater Lake is a caldera lake in the western United States, located in south-central Oregon. It is the main feature of Crater Lake National Park and is famous for its deep blue color and water clarity. The lake partly fills a nearly 2,148-foot (655 m)-deep caldera that was formed around 7,700 (± 150) years ago by the collapse of the volcano Mount Mazama. There are no rivers flowing into or out of the lake; the evaporation is compensated for by rain and snowfall at a rate such that the total amount of water is replaced every 250 years. At 1,943 feet (592 m), the lake is the deepest in the United States, and the seventh or ninth deepest in the world, depending on whether average or maximum depth is measured. Yep that was from Google. Still neat though.

From there I headed on to another one of Oregon’s 7 wonders, Mt. Hood. It’s normally a ski slope I guess. With no snow on the mountain other than the summit I proceeded to hike up it. Shew talk about a journey. The closer I thought I was getting to the base of the summit the further away it looked. It was like trying to hike up a beach if that makes any sense. The coarse rock was so loose it was sliding right out from under my feet. I still managed to capture a few good pictures though. On my way back down the mountain I pulled into a little spot that I thought was a pull off but turned out to be a road. The gate was open so I continued on. I ended up running into a bunch of little campsites and thought about just putting the tent up there.

So I did a quick Google to see how far I was from my next stop. Little did I know I was only 3 hours away and I wasn’t tired. Truck on! I headed out towards Mt. Rainier in Washington. I knew I’d be there late so I fueled the car up and got me some Taco Bell. Needless to say the last hour of the trip was a struggle. However, I did get there. Well to find out that every single campsite, hotel, motel, lodge, church, abandon building… etc. was taken. Well I went this far so I wasn’t going to stop. I drove into the park and even put money in the automated machine to get a ticket. I guess I could have bypassed it but I’m somewhat of an honest guy. With all the campsites full I pulled into a parking lot with several other cars and crashed. Yep, slept in the black jelly bean for 5 hours or so.

In the park I didn’t get any service at all. Thus the reason I didn’t post anything yesterday nor today. Well until I could get somewhere with service.