Sunday...

First - an update on Patti's computer - she was able to restore the partition that contains the operating system and her laptop now boots up... but it isn't exactly working correctly, so she is using Dwayne's laptop to do this post and looking into a laptop purchase in the near future.

Going back to Sunday - I mentioned that on Sunday we had a battery issue...

So, we stopped at the Napa store in Grants Pass...

We were able to park on the street right in front of the store, and after Dwayne disconnected the batteries, he ran a load tester on them and they tested out ok. We decided to continue on and have not had any further issues with starting.

We wanted to go to Crater Lake National Park. We had thought we might have multiple days in that area, depending on when we got away from Henderson's, but since we didn't get away until Sunday, and our reservation at the Thousand Trails campground in Bend started on Monday, we decided to see as much as we could on Sunday afternoon. We found a place to stay at the Thousand Springs Sno-Park (not to be confused with Thousand Trails!). When we got there, another RV was just hooking up to leave - they had stayed 4 nights there, so we felt good about leaving Miss Doozie while we went into the park - just about 10 miles away. Though we had seen some smoke on the way up, there did not seem to be much at the Sno-Park nor on the road into the National Park.

We had been told that Crater Lake was indescribably beautiful - and it was!

A panorama shot...

Dwayne was able to get some good shots...

Wizard Island

Llao Rock beyond Wizard Island

The water is very clear!

On the far side of the lake it was obvious that there were fires producing smoke.

When we visited the "Art in the Park" exhibit, I asked a park ranger about the smoke we could see in the distance. She let us know that we might get pretty close to that fire when we drove to Bend on Monday.

View from the building where the art exhibit was being held.

Wizard Island is also a volcano, and there is another one just under the surface...

A diagram of Wizard Island and Merriam Cone

The water in Crater Lake is from precipitation. There are no water sources running into it.

Most of the precipitation comes in the form of snow.

Normal snowbank height in spring of 15'

I'm sure that we would have enjoyed the drive all the way around the lake, but we elected not to do it on Sunday afternoon. We headed back to Miss Doozie, and found that the Sno-Park parking lot was very smokey. By Monday morning, there was quite an accumulation of ash on the Jeep. We were glad to be moving on up the road.