Grand Tour Blog  “Travel Edition”   July   11, 2012,

We won’t have any Roeper gathering news in this issue since we haven’t had any reunions since we reported on the Seattle and Portland events but rather, will concentrate on extolling the beauty of Oregon and northern California and remind you of upcoming reunions.

After leaving the Goldbergs on Sunday, we drove south to be overwhelmed.   John Muir once said that children should not be shown the beauty around Haines, Alaska or they would be disappointed with any other natural scenery thereafter.  I have seen Haines, Alaska and on Sunday saw something even more beautiful.  I have seen the Grand Canyon from inside and out, including from a rescue helicopter after I broke my back , the twin Pitons volcanoes of Santa Lucia from across the bay in Soufriere, the Great Wall, the Grand Tetons with a grizzly ripping apart an elk carcasses in the foreground and Paradise Valley on the slopes of the massive, overwhelming presence of Mt. Rainer and never have I seen anything to rival what we saw when topped a rim of     (wait for it)                 

Crater Lake.   The unbelievable blue of the water, the sky, the snow still there, the rock walls, the surrounding peaks and the everything about it conspired to leave Linda speechless and me misty-eyed.   The following photos will not do it justice so you must go there someday.








 We call this   "A Squirrel Amidst Beauty"

Two old things and a hard-to-see squirrel.

 A shot of the deepest lake in the U.S. at almost 2000 ft. deep.

I considered staying right here for the rest of my life and earn a living panhanding from tourists but Hindstrum talked me out of it.

The view if you look the other way from the crater.

                                                                           Wizard Island

Can't tell if the background is water or sky, can you?

    Hindstrum starts work on his "Snow Squirrel"

Here Hindstrum tries to give an acorn to Wizard Island as "thanks" for its beauty.

Another benefit was that it was not packed with tourists like you would find at Yellowstone or Yosemite.  A pleasant surprise was that Linda qualified for a senior citizen lifetime national parks/forests/monuments/battlefields pass for  $10 which also gives her half-price camping.   After a few hours of viewing and babbling on about what we were seeing (we were no longer speechless – quite the opposite) we drove on to camp just below the Oregon-California border in yet another riverside National Forest campground, this time for $7 thanks to Linda’s old age.

The next day was taken up with fighting with technology to get the Portland/Seattle blog out and with getting an oil change in Crescent City, CA.  We did have time for a hike down to a beautiful cove on the Pacific to look for tidal pools but we missed low tide. 

On our way south we did take driving loops through beautiful forests.   









That night we drove late and had a bit of trouble finding a site to park the van until we found the Burlington State Park campground  in the middle of a redwood grove.  The next morning we awoke to the incredible quietness and ambiance of being in a cathedral of 250 ft high trees with some being 40 foot in circumference at the base.  Although we were anxious to get to the coast to look for more marine life we couldn’t easily leave such a breakfast spot.  We did have problems with Stellar's jays, “thieves of  campsites,”  but Hindstrum leaped to the rescue.

 

Finally, we got moving and drove back to the Pacific to find a trail down to the crashing surf and rocks teeming with marine life.  From small crabs scrambling to seals sunning themselves it was the kind of place that inspires Linda and I to start thinking of how we should bring kids (Roeper and grandchildren) to see it.

Shots of one of many beaches easily accessible on Route 1

No more than 30 feet away and another 15 buddies basking close by

Lunch at another state park (Fort Bragg, CA), found Hinstrum at odds with birds again.  He kept babbling about some documentary he saw with Tippi Hendrin that exposed the evil of seagulls.

Also, he ran away and kept asking us to refer to him as  "Jonah" and yelling out "Call me Ishmael."

Then we had to book to get down to the Bay Area by the 7:00 PM time we told Peter Roeper we would arrive at his place in the hills of Oakland.  After a leisurely dinner and lots of catching up, we adjourned to answer email and encourage folks to come to the upcoming gatherings.

Please join us at:

July 11 (today)  Bay Area:  Park Chalet Restaurant, 1000 Great Highway (far end of Golden Gate Park, across the street from the ocean).  6:00-9:00.

July 14 (Sat.)  SoCal:    Tortilla Jo’s:  1510 S. Disneyland dr., Anaheim.  2:00-4:00 PM  (please note the end time changed from 5:00 to 4:00)

July 15 (Sun.)  San Diego :    Dick Morrow’s:  62 Aruba Bnd., Coronado 1:00-4:00

Please RSVP by phone 248-230-0466 or 248-318-0386.