Oregon Weekend: Part Two
After spending the entire day driving down to Crater Lake and then staying up late to see the amazing star show, we had a bit of a sleep in the next day and lazed around for a couple hours having coffee and breakfast.
Once we had the willpower, we headed out to drive around Crater Lake. But first we hit up the gift shop. I was very happy to see that social distancing was in effect and they were limiting the number of people allowed in the shop at once. This unfortunately led to about a 20 minute wait to get in. But it was worth it in the end when I emerged with stickers, a keyring, bug spray and sunscreen.
From there we headed out to start our drive. We hit up Watchman's Peak first which is the highest viewpoint and an amazing starter point for views of the lake. We then continued driving around, sporadically stopping off at every viewpoint we liked the look of, finishing up about four hours later at Vidae Falls. The road on the first half (if you are driving clockwise round the lake) is really well maintained but it took a bit of a dip on the second half, I think because it sees more exposure to the wind and such. The roads were still easily drive-able though, even in our 23 foot rig.
Once we departed the park we headed back to Annie Creek for another night, arriving back about 3pm to an empty lot. Well, almost empty. There was a man with his motorbike hanging out by the shed, who after seeing me reading for ten minutes asked if we had a battery charger. This was how I found out that motorbikes can't be jumpstarted like cars and the battery has to charge from the car battery. I feel bad that I offered (thinking it would be a quick jumpstart) and then poor Tim had to socialize with the guy while it charged for an hour
The park filled up much more the second night with almost no space left and all the tent camping spaces gone which left some poor latecomer tents on the tarmac, which can't have been comfortable. Due to the busyness of the park we didn't end up sitting out for the stars the second night and went to bed pretty early. One of our lovely neighbors decided to run their generator all night which was super inconsiderate of them. It wasn't even particularly hot or cold so we couldn't work out why they made this decision.