A beautiful gap in the woods!

Today is Tuesday, I think. We ended up in a hotel room in Grants Pass tonight because it has been raining hard. It just seemed like a pain in the you-know-what to try to 1) find a camping spot and pitch a tent in the mud or 2) move all the contents of the truck bed into the cab carefully in the rain and set up the "tent" under the truck topper. So anyway...hotel it is! On Monday we leisurely left Bend after some wandering, a stop at a thrift store, lunch at the Deschutes Brewery, and gassing up. Our destination was Crater Lake, but we stopped to see the Lava Cast Forest along the road first (quite amazing!). We got a bit detoured when we headed for the north entrance of the park only to find it closed. We weren't upset because the detour was beautiful...an unexpected waterfall and beautiful mountain vistas. We swung in through the west entrance after weaving in and out of the the tall trees, hills, and ridges. The gentleman at the gate was courteous, though it was frustrating to hear from him that the north entrance was opened in the afternoon, but the highway signs weren't updated. We drove straight away for the visitor center before finding our campsite, only to find that the center closed at 5 pm - and it was about 6 pm. Bummer! Next we got to the Mazama campground only to wait for 20 minutes to speak to the agent who would assign us a site. His response was not great, though it made for a great night. The campgrounds were not open, nor would be any time soon. Granted, at 5000 feet snow magically appeared on the side of the road, which I hadn't anticipated or even thought would effect our plans. Why didn't anybody tell me that the snow in Crater Lake isn't gone for sure until mid July, if then? Bummer! The guy to "check us in to a site" was a bit arrogant, which really turned us off, and $146 for a two bed lodge suite was not part of our plan. We had seen a number of camping sites along our detour, which were all below 5000 feet, so we headed back in that direction. Huckleberry Mountain was our winning turn. After climbing a road back into snow, we had a brilliant turn around with the trailer behind us. At the bottom of the hill, there had been another road running parallel to a creek, so we headed back down to it and found ourselves in an enchanted forest. I kid you not, the views were unparalleled; the trees both massive and dense at times, and then long and spindly climbing up the ridges; the rushing creek loud; and little havens of grass patches tucked into the trees revealed all sorts of places we could settle in. The light was perfect...still some sun in the sky. It was difficult to choose to stop at any of these little havens when there was still more road, and we had no idea when and where it would end. At last, we realized with the help of Gary the Garmin that the road would empty back out onto the highway soon enough. And like a stroke of a magic wand, there was a road that peeled off to the north into a large open space. At first wandering we found wild strawberries, a purple trillium, and probably half a dozen mushroom varieties. There was another large clearing with a fire circle just above the roaring creek. Wow - it seemed like a fairy tale place where, as a child, we imagined our backyards into or which we wrote about in our school journals. I could see myself as a grown girl wanting to build a treehouse and live on the strawberries. Unfortunately, it did get much more cold than I was ready for, so I didn't sleep as well. Waking up, I was lucky that Thomas started the truck and nearly carried me, sleeping bag and all, into the warmth of the cab as he broke camp...true love! After a morning walk around the Rogue Gorge, we found breakfast before we headed back to Crater Lake. It really is glorious, and we hope to return some year late in the summer when we can hike and enjoy the trails. Today the snow was still quite deep, so overlooks and the West Rim Drive were as much as we could enjoy...and we thoroughly did! Headed west to the beach, we stopped at multiple waterfalls to stretch our legs and bask in the beauty of God's creation. The rain started about Glide, OR and didn't let up. So tomorrow...we head off for Thomas's first sight of living redwood trees and then crawl our way up the coast of Oregon. The rain is not forecasted to let up till Portland, but we have raincoats!