On the way to Yellowstone we started to see more and more fly fishermen along the banks of beautiful rivers. We also started to see more rustic homes, often log homes with logs that had to be up to 16 or 18+ inches in diameter. As we got closer we couldn't help but wonder what would be in store for us? What we found was that these Nat’l Parks offered something for everyone - beautiful rivers, fields, mountains, streams, unusual natural beauty, tons of traffic, pronghorn, thick crowds of people, Canadian Geese, American White Pelicans, bison, bears(grizzly and black), did I mention traffic jams, elk, moose, bald eagles, more crowds, hawks and osprey, did I say traffic and swarms of people, geysers, miles of construction with one way traffic- 30 minute delays, mud pots, more ... read more

Sometimes when you pick an RV park it comes with surprises. In our case we had picked Soap River RV Park in Washington, knowing nothing about its history. Much to our surprise it turned out to have a fascinating history that we have enjoyed learning about it. The blog won’t follow the order of how we went about things for we need to first explain how this area came to be. Over the last two million years, large parts of northern North America, Europe, and Asia were repeatedly covered with Glacial ice sheets, at times reaching over 10,000 feet in thickness. Periodic climate changes (we hear about this a lot lately) resulted in advances and retreats of the ice. Now comes the interesting part. About 18,000 years ago a large finger of ice advanced into Idaho, ... read more

Passing through Portland we were surprised to see high above us, and crossing over highway I-5, a gondola. This gondola takes people from one point of the city to another and was higher than any ski lift that I have seen. Almost immediately we rounded a curve to suddenly see a HUGE mountain off to our right. Quickly checking our map we found that it must be Mt. Hood (11,239’). When we arrived at our Good Sam RV park we found it is one of the best RV parks we have seen on our trip so far. With concrete pads for RV & Car, well manicured lawns, clean grounds, spacious sites, it is simply lovely! It has street lamps at each site, newspaper boxes at each site, and wide roads to make it easier to maneuver ... read more

It’s supposed to be summer and yet our temps here are between 37 and 50's depending on the elevation. Crater Lake is a deep blue in color and is the deepest lake in the nation at 1943’. That makes it the 7th deepest in the world according to my information. The lake was not seen by white men till 1853 when gold prospectors stumbled upon it. It was dubbed “Deep Blue Lake” by Isaac Skeeters but in 1869 newspaperman Jim Sutten gave the lake its current name of “Crater Lake” because of the cauldron shape he saw on the top of Wizard Island, the small volcano in the lake. The lake was formed about 7700 years ago after 12,000 foot Mount Mazama erupted, an explosion 42 times greater than the 1990 eruption of Mount St. Helens. ... read more