Bend/Diamond Lake/Crater Lake

From Frenchglen we retraced out path back to Bend, stopping at a Coast to Coast spot just outside of Bend. O.K. camp, not great but with Coast to Coast the price was right. The high lites were a resident young flock of wild geese, which were fun and pretty until they woke us up at 5, goll dern, A. M.! Also, there were acres and acres of wild forest land and trails that Roxy could run and hunt off leash. More great fun for all of us.

Bend is a really neat town, I could envision living here. Lots of open space, nice horse places/ranches, town itself is very nice, clean, friendly and always the feel of in the forest/country. We met Stu and Rosemary (Joe and Barbara's friends) who live in Bend and we all went to the original Pancake house. Swedish pancakes with Loganberries! Talk about a sugar high. We ran a few errands, had the filthy truck washed, I had forgotten it was white, and back to camp.

The site we were in at Sundance Meadows was set such that a tree was exactly in front of the rig, just about as far away as the truck is long. It was an interesting parking job and now an interesting job of lining the truck up and hitching. Nevertheless, we did it and by 9:30a we were off to Diamond Lake and Crater Lake.

We had a pleasant drive down 97 for about 100 miles to Diamond Lake. Diamond Lake is a beautiful lake surrounded by pines and immediately put us in a happy mood. The park kept us in a happy mood, a great camp ground. Well maintained, nice sites, nice people and just across a little road from the lake. Well forested with lots of pines, mostly lodge pole pines and plenty of wildflowers to touch it off just so.

The camp manager said he had some good news and bad news for me; good news was that we would have a pull through site (meaning no backing and easy in - usually), bad news it would be the toughest pull through I would see! Another nice feature of this park is that they escort you to your site and help guide you in. This was one site where I didn't mind a little help, check out the picture. But what a great site!

Our great site at Diamond Lake Resort. We loved this one.

Diamond Lake and Mt Thielsen.

Shell and I jumped on our bikes and rode a little around the lake and up to the Diamond Lake lodge. Nice lodge, just like you would picture at a picturesque mountain lake. Fine marina with rental fishing boats, private boats and some pontoon "party" boats. Even though the bike trail follows the lake, it goes up and down quite a bit making the bike ride a little challenging. Adding to the challenge was a fresh hatch of gnats. Without exaggeration I'm sure there were more than a billion, maybe a trillion! While you are riding you can't open your mouth or you will breathe gnats! Remember the old joke about how to tell a happy motorcyclist, bugs on his teeth, well that was us! 7 miles latter and some comments from my partner on my G.D. adventures we were back in camp.

Peter and Beverly King had joined us per plan and would remain with us the rest of the trip. They had completed a 250 mile plus run to catch up to us today. (We were a day ahead of schedule to allow breaking up our next long leg into two days.)

Next day Shell and I went up to Crater Lake, which was about 20 minutes from camp. Crater is spectacular, beyond description. The book talks about the "WOW" factor that everyone experiences at least their first time, if not every time. We unfortunately had one detractor, there was quite a haze from all the fires especially the Happy Camp fire. This robbed us of some of the splendor because with out a nice clear blue sky you don't get the incredible blue water that is unduplicated anywhere. Still it was so awesome and grand, unbelievable. And imagine this gorgeous, awesome, pristine beauty lay here for centuries without even being known. A prospector stumbled across the lake in the mid to late 1800's. 7th deepest lake in the world, the deepest part is almost 2000'. This depth is what gives the lake it phenomenal deep blue color.

This is early am, you can just see the starting of some haze in the upper left on the mountains, but this gives an idea of the water color. The little island, which is actually a volcano, is Wizard Island (looks like a wizard's hat).

Looking straight down at the water, this is fairly true to the real color (the white stuff is snow!).

Looking northward, another veiw of Wizard Island.


Another color perception shot.


Looking sort of westward, another angle, another perception. There are over 30 pull outs along the lake and every one gives you a new and different view of the lake.

These little pretties were right where the above shot was taken.

This is called Phantom Ship, the rock supposedly looking like a phantom ship. And to put it into perspective, the rock is 16 stories high.

Mid July, still plenty of snow around.

We had a great picnic lunch all by ourselves in this nice little pull out spot.

We also visited the Pinnacles. Many people overlook or skip the Pinnacles - Don't! When Mt Mazama erupted (and eventually collapsed and turned into Crater Lake) hot molten lava/magma cascaded rapidly down the hills. As it settled gases started to escape from below and created fumaroles, channels through the magma for the gas to exit. These channels were so hot that they welded rock and minerals to their sides. Years later as the land was eroded by rivers, the fumarole fossils remained. In other words they are fossilized burps! Very different and quite interesting.

Some of the Pinnacles.



Vidae Falls (just before the Pinnacles turn off)

The next morning we left at oh seven thirty to get to the lake early to see a clearer view. And it worked, we were duly rewarded. For dinner that evening we walked to the Pizza joint right on the lake. Really a funky little place but what a view and the pizza was great.

One day we rented one of the pontoon "party" boats and the six of us toured the lake. Great way to see the lake up close and personal. At lunch time we tossed out the anchor and had one of the best lunches of our trip.

The motley crew of the party boat. Captain Mc at the wheel ("you are now free to move about the boat, please enjoy your trip"). I thought if I fired at the exact time Peter did I could cancel out his picture ;-).

On Sunday Shelle and I decided to circumnavigate Diamond Lake. They have a really great, paved trail all around the lake. Again it has lots of challenging climbs, more billions of gnats and over 12 miles of riding but so, so much worth it. For a while the trail leaves the lake and we discovered two little lakes (Teale and Horse Lakes) which we could also ride around and a great stream called Silent Stream. Really a great adventure.

Silent Stream along the bike trail around Diamond Lake.
Bike trail bridge over Silent Stream, I mean how nice is this?

Our original plan called for us to drive from Diamond Lake to Klamath, Ca, about a 200 mile run. Barbara, who had made the trip before, rightfully encouraged us to break this trip up since the majority of it is over twisty, turny mountain roads. So we found a place that looked promising in Selma, just south of Grants Pass. Just two miles out of Selma is Lake Selmac, a very nice lake with good swimming, great bass fishing (we were told that some of the biggest bass in Oregon were taken from this lake) and also trout and crappie. Lake Selmac resort is a nice little camp ground, we were all glad we had stopped here.

Our camp site at Lake Selmac Resort (none of these "resorts" are really resorts, everyone just uses the name loosely). To the picture's left is the lake across the street, we have the view from the rig.

Lake Selmac Resort mail box, 2700 Lakeview drive. You have to love this mail box!

We decided to have a swimming adventure so traipsed off to the lake. Roxy was in 7th heaven as she bounded into the lake and started swimming. There were some kids on a float maybe 50 yards or so out in the lake. They were diving and having a great time so Roxy decided to join them. After she was out there for a while I got worried she would get tired and maybe have trouble so I swam out to coax her back in. As soon as she got back in she turned around and swam back out to play with the kids. She did this several times, never tiring and was having an absolute blast.

Swiming in the lake. The water was great. It was about 90 degrees outside and the water must have been about 70 degrees (with occasional very cold currents drifting through), it was really enjoyable.
The little brown dot, mid left, is Roxy taking off one more time to swim out to the swim float.

The "girls" swimming. Shelle is going "come to Mama".


Roxy was bound and determined that this little girl's water seat was actually a dog toy. The little girl was very calm and very nice to Roxy, while Roxy's parents had visions of law suits over mad dog sinks float and drowns cute adorable little girl.

Roxy is pretty competitive and likes to compete in different ways (like out running my bike no matter how hard I try to approach a heart attack). At one point I was swimming along side of her and the race was on! The faster I swam the faster she swam, it was pretty amusing. She could clearly out stamina me, no doubt there, I could beat her if I swam free style, but if I tried to swim doggy paddle style she would just clean my clock, and of course she felt doggy paddle was the only fair contest!

Lake Selby swans at sunset.

We had a very enjoyable stay at our highway 199 "break". 199 is an interesting run which we will be taking down to Crescent City (and the next posting).