6/22/2017 - On to Oregon

Thursday - Time to move again, although today is a short drive so we took our time getting out of Tulelake.  We went into town for breakfast to try Mike and Wanda's, but it was closed again.  Across the street was "Jolly Kone," which we thought was just a hamburger/ice cream shop, but Joe asked a guy crossing the street, who had just left there, and he said they had a good breakfast so that's where we ended up.  And it was good.  On our way back to the campground, we stopped at the museum here at the fairgrounds.  It was actually a very well put-together museum of the history of the area, farming, logging, war years, etc.  We learned that other crops grown here, at least in the past, included horseradish, barley, wheat and rye.  We have seen several grain elevators around, so that makes sense.   They had a really nice wall of the soldiers from the area who had lost their lives in battle, similar to the Viet Nam Wall except this one had a picture of each soldier too. 

I didn't take any pictures inside, but their outside exhibits were rusty old farm equipment from the area -- hay mowers, potato planters and diggers, and other rusty things.  The guys were interested.

They had indoor exhibits inside a building of things like a linotype, old cook stove, old washing machine, etc.  And hanging on the outside of a shed were lots of hand tools from back in the day.

We didn't find out what those blue flowers were but we did learn that different 4-H groups are responsible for the various flower gardens around the fairground/museum buildings and driveways.  I especially liked this one of the tires -- I told Eric we needed more tires (he didn't agree).

We went on back to camp and Joe washed the dust and bugs off the car before we de-camped and got hooked up.  It was almost noon when we pulled out, and we officially crossed the Oregon state line about 12 minutes later (we were only about 5 miles south).

We saw more agriculture as we wound our way on through this valley and into Klamath Falls, Oregon.  We made a wrong turn there and had to turn around, but other than that, we drove through Klamath Falls, and fueled on the edge of town ($2.509 with Camping World discount of 5 cents at Pilot).  We only had to buy fuel twice in California, once for $2.799 (Barstow) and then in Bishop for $3.099. 

We arrived at our campground in Chiloquin (20 miles north of Klamath Falls, and right at the turn-off to Crater Lake) and were in our camp site by 2:00, only 59 mile-drive today.  We have a river-view site (Williamson River) with a nice view of the tea-colored water running past.  Saw some kids and fishermen on the water in the course of the afternoon.  Joe and I both put our foot it to confirm that the water was COLD!

We were going to eat in tonight but I couldn't come up with enough ingredients to make a meal, so we tried the Mexican restaurant just down the road.  It was very good.  We also stopped at the travel center up the road, which has a casino behind it (we didn't go in there).  We whooped the guys in cards again, then walked down by the river but the mosquitoes were out in full force so that didn't take long.

The Brundiges are finally on the road.  They made it to Las Vegas (119 degrees, Marilyn reported), and had dinner with our grandson Cody, who has a summer job in Vegas.  We will be eager to meet up with them, hopefully sometime next week, to get the latest scoop on Cody.  They are getting their refrigerator taken care of first thing in the morning in Vegas.

We need to check about the status of the rim road at Crater Lake.  We are hoping they will have it open for the weekend.  But we are going to try to find the falls in Klamath Falls tomorrow.  The weather here is lovely.  It was 60 degrees this morning (Dave and Mazie put the electric blanket back on their bed), and I think today's high was about 84.  Wouldn't be a bad place to spend a few extra days to wait on the Brundiges if that would work out.  At the least, we are here until Monday.  In Oregon, Finally!

6/21/17 - National Wildlife Refuge and Lava Beds

Wednesday - We are enjoying our quiet little campground here in Tulelake, although Joe got up sneezing and continued that all day long.  Don't know if it is the grass, the hay all around us, or a combination of everything green here, but his allergies have really kicked in.  This morning we took a drive out of town, first to the National Wildlife Refuge.  Along the way, Joe stopped to check out the crop that he couldn't identify in a field along the way.  The leaf smelled like mint, and we confirmed at the Refuge that mint was grown in the area, along with potatoes, radishes, strawberries and onions.

After a brief film in the visitor center, we headed out to the lake.  Tule Lake is huge, probably not very deep, and is home to many waterfowl.  "At least 489 species of wildlife visit or live in this volcanic wonderland," including bald eagles during their winter migration.  Before we quite reached the lake, we saw our first deer.

Once we got to the lake, we saw lots of birds, ducks, geese, seagulls, most of which we couldn't identify.

Ducks with babies.

We watched a gaggle of Canadian geese march up the road in front of us, then dive into the lake.

During most of our drive today, beautiful Mt. Shasta showed herself -- sometimes peeking over the tops of closer mountains, sometimes standing out by herself.  The mountain is so pretty it is hard not to take advantage of photo ops.

We even saw a pelican on the lake.  And some other bird that I couldn't get a photo of -- Scientific Joe named it "a black, long-neck pointy nose" bird. 

Joe scared up an owl too, right beside the road.  I didn't get a picture of that either, and he said I should have, it was practically sitting on the radiator cap!  (But I was in the back seat)  Anyhow, that was exciting, as well as several hawks we watched swooping low over the marshes.

As we left the lake area, we saw our second deer.  At first, I just saw his ears sticking up; then he moved a little and we could see all of him.

We saw one more deer along here, and it was the most cooperative.  Joe stopped the car and got drinks out of the back, and the deer stayed in our sight the whole time --  I think he liked the sound of Joe's voice because he would look up every time Joe said something.

We drove out of the Refuge and headed to the Lava Beds National Monument.  The Visitor Center was at the far end of this drive, but we stopped along the way and read some of the interpretative signs.  We stopped at one called "Hospital Rock," and Joe took a group picture, although he chopped part of his head off when he settled the camera on the Rock.

There was a nice view of the lake area from this high point.

This area has more than 200 caves and lava tubes.  We decided not to do any cave exploring, so we stopped at some of the viewpoints, checked out the visitor center and watched the film there.  It's nice to have the American the Beautiful pass, which gets us into National Parks and National Monuments free.

We drove back out of this Park and headed to Camp Tulelake, the Camp built by the CCCs and used as a War Relocation Center (like the one south of Bishop that we toured), and then as a POW camp to house workers to relieve the shortage of agricultural labor .  Unfortunately, the Camp was closed so we only got to see the barracks from the road.

We got back to our campground around 3:00 and decided to try for pizza again tonight.  We regrouped a couple of hours later and headed out, and the pizza restaurant was open tonight.  So we had dinner in Oregon (Malin, Oregon).  The state line is just south of this little town, so we weren't sure which state we were in.  On our way back to camp, we stopped to get pictures of some beautiful blue flowers at the corner of the fairgrounds where we are camped.  We do not know what kind of flowers these are, but we really liked them.  They had some other pretty flowers here at their entry.

 California poppies.

The school is right across the road, and their mascot must be a goose because they are "Home of the Honkers."

After our nightly card game (the girls won handily again), we called it a night.  This is an interesting area -- lots of history, lots of agriculture, lots of mountains.  It was worth the stop.  And the weather was beautiful -- 60s at night, 80s during the day.  Sorry, Arizona.

6/20/2017 - On to Tulelake, California

Tuesday - After our late night drive last night, we opted for a late start this morning, so we left Canyondam around 10:00.  We got to drive the part of the lake that we only saw in the dark last night, it is a very pretty lake, we probably should have done more on it (like fishing).  We drove through Susanville, then headed north on scenic 139, up and down mountains and through forests.  We saw very pretty valleys, with green pastures dotted with cattle.

A deer crossed the road in front of Dave and Mazie, but Joe and I didn't see it.  We did spot 5 antelope, though, and that was a welcome sight.  I was texting with Jeff during our drive today as the temperature climbed in Arizona.  It was 105 at 10:00, and still climbing.  I think 118 was as high as he saw, but I believe the airport reported 120.  We were at a balmy 87 degrees when we got off the road at 2:30.  We only drove 188 miles today, but they were hard miles, so our drivers were ready to stop.

We selected a campground on the fairgrounds in Tulelake (elevation 4,035), about 5 miles from the Oregon border.  It's a really small town, population around 1100.  But the sites are full hook-up, on grass which is a nice change.  And we have phone service again.

There's some agriculture around here, in addition to hay.  We saw fields of potatoes and onions, lots of irrigation going on.

The Brundiges have had another setback.  They had hoped to get on the road tomorrow, but now they are having trouble with the refrigerator in their motorhome, so they aren't leaving until Thursday, because they have an appointment in Las Vegas on Friday to replace or repair the refrigerator.  Just one more thing for them to deal with.  Not sure when we will meet up with them, but we will be happy for them to get on the road, heading our way.

Our next  "destination" is Crater Lake, but we found out today that most of the roads in that Park are also closed due to snow, so we don't know how much we will get to see of it.  We are still in sight of snow-capped mountains.

Tomorrow we will check out the sights around Tulelake:  there is a national refuge, lava beds national monument, WWII Internment/Segregation Camp, and POW Camps used to provide workers to relieve the shortage of agricultural labor during WWII.  The POW Camp used barracks built by the CCCs.  That should keep us busy for a day.