After Crater Lake, only 33 miles in circumference, was circumnavigated, we crossed the Pumice Desert (a patch of treeless scratch less than a half-mile across) and flew north toward the belly of Oregon. Long, rolling rise-and-falls, seer-suckered by sagebrush, scruff and cattle, persevered on US 97 until we took the small road at Madras, drawn eastward by a tiny brown square on our AAA map labeled Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. We had purchased a Golden Eagle year-long National Parks pass at Lassen, Continue reading “Blue Highway Travelogue–Fossil, Oregon”
Tag: Crater Lake
Blue Highway Travelogue–Crater Lake
“Continental Breakfast Served” is written on the doorposts of my motel room, so I venture down at 8 a.m. to sample their cuisine. Two styros of hot dark coffee substance and three ping pong ball-sized poppy seed muffins later, I am back in Room #244 embracing my belly wondering whether liquid poison or bad baking will undo me.
A half-hour further, as I load up the wagons in preparation for our journey northward toward the Oregon Trail, I notice a glistening, reddish smear Continue reading “Blue Highway Travelogue–Crater Lake”
Blue Highway Travelogue–Mt. Lassen
“If you want to hike to the peak, you’d best do that this morning,” Ranger Ilene cautioned at the entrance gate. Dry lightning had recently set fires across four counties, and we could see two plumes graying the horizon of blue sky to the west. Her electro-shock warning encouraged us to choose Lassen National Park‘s pamphlet-assisted Bumpass Hell Trail to a 100-meter bowl of bubbling fumaroles—gray clay molten plopping sulfur steam—and circular ponds of green-gray water, bubblescum-coated and Venusian under the low cloud cover. Continue reading “Blue Highway Travelogue–Mt. Lassen”