Trip to California and Oregon

My mom came to visit from Minnesota at the end of June. Dave came up with a cool trip route that took us along the Oregon coast, down to the Redwood Forest in California, and back up through Oregon by way of Crater Lake. In Oregon we stopped in several cute coastal towns and saw the amazing Oregon Dunes. You can never imagine as much sand as there is at the Dunes! Okay, so maybe the Sahara Desert has it beat, but it was a lot of sand.

Here is a picture of my mom and me looking absolutely tiny compared to this redwood tree. The middle of this tree was burned out, and we could look straight up the middle. The air in the forest was damp and chilly, but that is what the trees like best!

I thought this log would make a great cross country jump... for Advanced level eventing, maybe! It was enormous, and this one was small compared to some other logs we saw. Some were taller than us!

This was at Crater Lake. When we drove into Oregon from California, the temperature had climbed to 98 degrees (is anyone other than me thinking of Nick Lachey? haha) but by the time we got up to the lake, it had dropped to 65 degrees! Can you believe how much snow was still on the ground? Parts of the park were still closed because of snow on the road! Mom sees enough snow in Minnesota, but we still had to take our picture standing in it.

Dave took some beautiful pictures of the lake. This is Wizard Island, the result of volcanic eruptions underneath the lake's surface. Crater lake has the clearest water in the world, and it was such a gorgeous blue color!

I am truly terrified of heights, so this is my reaction to being close to the edge of this viewing area! Okay, I was kind of pretending, but it really dropped of straight down to the lake at nearly every viewpoint. I think it was at least 1,000 feet down to the lake's surface, so that would be a long way to fall!

It's nice to look at the pictures and enjoy the view without giant mosquitos biting me! We were eaten alive, even through our clothes! We had camped for two nights in a row at this point, so if it looks like we need showers, you are correct ;-)

The last thing we did on our trip was visit the Oregon state capitol building. It was such a nice trip, and we all had a great time! Dave and I have not traveled south of Philomath, OR since moving to Seattle. It was nice to have a good excuse to take a trip with my mom. It did, however, feel good to get home and see our doggies!