Week of Contrasts: Travel with Craig

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After a day and a half in San Francisco, I picked up my brother, Craig from the San Francisco airport so that he could join me in a week of my road trip and then fly out of Salt Lake City seven days later. We spent two days driving up the California coast and stopped and hiked in the Redwoods, amazing. We then spent two nights camping on the southern coast edge of Oregon where we hiked on the rocks, got caught in fast moving sand and watched sea otters at play. (If there is a next life, I want to be a river otter.)

From the coast we drove to Crater Lake and then on to Bend. If you ever go to Crater Lake when there is still snow, don’t believe the people in the gift shop, walk up to the lake or crater edge. If we would have believed the gift store folks we would have only seen snow and a little lake out of the second flow observation room. As you can tell from the pictures we would have missed a lot.

In Bend we went to the High Desert Museum and then drove across the High Desert to Idaho. The unfortunate thing was that the last couple of days with Craig the area was having a cold spell where it was about 20 degrees colder than usual. So when we took a drive to the mountains for some hiking, we cut it short when we could no longer see the mountains due to falling snow. On the last travel day with Craig, we went to the SunValley ski area and then to Crater of the Moon National Park. Once again we were only able to get to the area around the welcome center since the road was closed due to snow. Craters of the Moon is a large area of lava rock. We were able to go on a short hike through the lava rock and the snow.

We also saw several areas that were along the route of the Oregon Trail. It is hard to believe how many thousands of people made their way across the country with only the hopes of a better life. It reminded me of our current immigrants who travel over the harsh desert, they have the fear of INS and questionable employers. We honor those who made their way across the country on the Oregon Trail and they were actually going through and taking away native lands, but now we demonize those in a similar situation immigrating to the USA.

So it was a trip of contrasts, tall redwoods, rocky ocean side, snow covered Crater Lake, high desert, snow covered mountains, and fields of lava rock. It was great traveling with Craig and once again I thank him for his tolerance with traveling with dogs and the more northern climates so that they can hang out in the car for more than a couple of minutes.

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