Day 12: Bend, OR to Klamath Falls, OR
Another short one today, because I knew I wanted to spend a little time at Crater Lake in between these two places. Normal sort of morning for me, the hotel I was in was part of a sort of campus of different bars and restaraunts (all used to be a parochial school) so I got breakfast on site for once and then loaded up and ran around getting a few things. Walgreens for foam earplugs, as the reusable ones still bother me after wearing them for an hour. I need to sand them a little more, probably will do that when I get home. Then gas, of course, and then I hit the road.
The road to the south out of Bend, 97, starts out as a four lane and then diminishes to a two lane road pretty quickly, like 20 miles or so out of town. Pine forests grow close to the side of the road, so you don’t see much besides trees and the road in front of you. And the traffic, which seemed pretty thick at first but then tapered off so that by the time I was at Crescent, it was basically just me. I do like finding that spot in the pattern where the cars around, behind and ahead, are over the horizon and can’t be seen or heard.
Stopped for gas at Chemult, not because I needed it but because I knew there wasn’t any in the park and I didn’t want to run low. I didn’t need to worry really, the milage today was pretty low. Also got lunch, ran into some guys also on bikes who just came up Route 1 the way I’m planning to go down, they said it was fresh asphalt and good riding.
Got to the northern park entrance and there was nobody working the gate. I guess midafternoon on a tuesday they just figure it’s not worth paying someone the hours? Started into the park, pulled off at the first pull off I saw, took a couple pictures, then headed to the first view from the rim.
There’s this thing that happens when something is too big, it just kind of becomes flat. Like, looking at the Grand Canyon can be that way, or like, looking up at the stars. The distances are too big to wrap your head around. Crater Lake is right on the edge where it’s massive but it’s small enough to understand. It formed when a volcano collapsed, leaving a big hole which filled in with snowmelt and rain over a few millennia.
Also, and this is no shade on Yellowstone which, you’ll remember almost murdered me with flurries, Crater Lake just seems more raw, more savage. Like, I know the Yellowstone caldera contains way more energy than the volcano that collapsed to create Crater Lake. I think it’s the scale thing again— I can imagine the mountain that was there, the collapse of the same. The energy required to do that, to create the neat ring of steep cliffs. The rubble and the jagged peaks.
Then I went to the gift shop, got a t-shirt and a gatorade, and rode out. Stopped a couple times outside the park, the Cascades on 97 are really beautiful too, and Klamath Lake, really great. Got to my rental, started laundry and ordered dinner. Now I’m gonna edit photos and push this out, and go to bed. Tomorrow Eureka, and then I make a game time decision, to push home on Thursday or stop somewhere short (probably Mendocino) and get home on Friday.