Evans RV Adventures

On to Clarkston, WA, passing beautiful Lake Wallula and wheat fields on our 177 mile drive. We’re meeting our good friends Bob & Judy Roos and plan to spend about a week together. We look forward to catching up with each other and enjoying good company.

We ‘re staying at Premier Resorts – Granite Lake RV Resort and we have a great site facing out over the lake/river!

We got our ‘home’ setup and then Shelly spotted Bob on his motorcycle and Judy just behind in their motorhome, so we went up to the office to greet them. Hugs! After chatting  for a bit, we left them to get pulled in (2 sites down from us) and setup.

We joined back up, sitting outside, enjoying the weather, views, and even some Robin’s (lots of them around, including babies). It’s good to be with friends!

This time we traveled 181 miles to Boardman Marina & RV Park in Boardman, Oregon.

It was a nice drive with views of snow capped mountains.

Once we were on I-84, we drove alongside the Columbia River, catching sight of the John Day Dam.

The RV park is right on the river and we plan to relax and enjoy two days here without any plans.

Got up this morning and headed to Desert Song Community Church just south of us in Redmond, OR. Really nice church. friendly people, good message, and contemporary worship.

This is a growing church, working on their building while holding services in a local school.

After church, we headed back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the day.

Left Diamond Lake (& the mosquitoes) driving 123 miles north to arrive at Crooked River Ranch RV Park in Crooked River Ranch, Oregon.

This park sits adjacent to Crooked River Canyon and we had a good view of it’s shear walls from our site.

After it had cooled off outside, we took a walk to the campground’s overlook, which offers great views down into the canyon floor, river, and the rim of the canyon. We caught sight of a family of deer, including a few spotted fawns, but weren’t able to get a good picture of them because they saw us and quickly ran off.

Got up this morning to go see Crater Lake National Park before it got too busy.

We arrived at the first overlook area and became breakfast for the mosquitoes .  Even with bug spray, you couldn’t stay still for long, as they’d be all over you. But we endured and got some good morning pictures at various stops along the way.

Our first major hike of the day was Cleetwood Cove Trail. This is the only place at Crater Lake where you can walk down to the water. It’s 1.1 miles each way, with a 700+ft change in elevation! Shelly got her hiking poles out for this one, as she knew she would need them for the hike back up.

Nice views of the lake on the hike. The closer we got to the water, the more beautiful it became. So blue and so clear. It is considered to be the cleanest large body of water in the world, at it’s deepest point, it’s 1943 feet deep!

We took a few pictures at the shore into the water of the rocks on the bottom. We’re unsure of how deep it was here, but it was certainly over our heads.

The water is also quite cold, as the lake is only fed by snow and rain. It is from this shoreline that you can take a two hour boat tour of the lake. We opted not to do this at this time, as it would cut into our time to explore the rest of the park.

We took some time to enjoy the lake before hiking back up. The park equates it to climbing 65 flights of stairs! So we would stop to catch the view and our breath many times on the climb up.

Our next stop was Cloudcap Overlook, the highest point on Rim drive at 7960 feet. Nice views!

On to Pumice Castle Overlook. Here, you catch a nice view of orange pumice rock eroded into the shape of a medieval castle.

Next was Phantom Ship Overlook. This is a rocky island in the shape of a small pirate ship, equal in height to a 16 story building.

After our ship viewing, we took a seven mile drive away from the rim to Pinnacles Overlook. These are chimneys that formed when hot ash cooled after the big volcanic eruption. These were neat to see! They were well matched in shape by the surrounding trees.

Back to Rim drive, we stopped to take a short hike on Sun Notch Trail.

This is a must do trial! What beautiful views of the lake. And yes, the water is that blue. We didn’t touch up the color’s in any way!

We also had a closer view of the Phantom Ship.

Leaving there, we pulled off at Vidae Falls, snapped a couple pictures, and headed to Rim Village Visitors Center for more views and pictures.

Our last stop was Watchman Overlook, which has the best views of Wizard Island. This is a cinder-cone volcano with a 90 foot deep crater in its peak.

You can have one of the boats drop you off at this island and then hike to the top! Maybe our next visit here.

Minus the mosquitoes (which seemed to improve as the day went by), this was a perfect day spent admiring God’s creations.

Left California and drove 108 miles, entering Oregon.

We passed Upper Klamath Lake (Klamath Falls) as we traveled to Diamond Lake RV Park, just north of Crater Lake.

We were within walking distance to Diamond Lake where we had a good view of Mt Bailey. Now, about the RV Park, two disappointments… We were told (when we made reservations) that we would be in one of their new sites where we would have 50 amp service and they ability to get our satellite. Well, that’s not what they gave us. They put us in a 30 amp site that we heavily wooded. No satellite reception and the power at that site was not good. Our EMS (electrical management system) cut off the power numerous times because of low voltage. We couldn’t even turn on our computer and TV without knocking out the electric. And the mosquitoes were TERRIBLE! In the two days we stayed here, we went through 4 small cans of bug spray! For this reason, we stayed inside as much as possible and didn’t take the cats out. Now the Mosquitoes aren’t the RV park’s fault but due to the issues, we don’t plan to come back here.

Drove 194 miles today to Tulelake Butte Valley Fairgrounds in Tulelake, CA.

We had great views along the way of Shasta Lake, Mount Shasta, and other unknown mountains.

Full hook-ups for $13/night with our Passport discount. Sweet!

The sites are thick lush grass and we enjoyed walking barefoot through it.

The cats spent much of the day outside with us lounging in the grass. Come evening, we enjoyed seeing the stars in the night shy. Without any light pollution, there were so many stars we had to look pass them to pick constellations out. We were also able to make out the Milky Way quite well. This is a park we’ll come back to.

Drove over to Lassen Volcanic National Park today in car.

They just opened the park a few days ago and not all the trails are cleared of snow at this time. But we’ll see what we can.

Our first stop was a hike to Mill Creek Falls, which was basically a river that goes slightly downhill. No good pictures of it though, as we could only see parts of it through tree branches.

Some of the pines we saw were really neat, with lime green lichen growing on them.

Our next stop was the most interesting – Sulphur Works.

Here we saw several  steam vents, as well as a boiling mud pot. Neat to see, but not good to smell Rotten eggs, anyone?

The trail with the most geothermic features, Bumpass Hell, was closed due to too much snow covering the trail. Maybe we’ll see it another time.

We stopped at many pull-offs along the way, taking pictures here & there.

Emerald Lake and Lake Helen were nice to see with their ice blue color.

Lassen Peak (the volcano that last erupted in 1915) was open for hiking 1/3 of the way up. We watched people going up, but decided not to go ourselves as it would make for too long of a day. We did see it’s “Vulcan Eye” looking down on us.

On one of our stops, we were able to see some of the pink algae that grows on the snow at times.

Our last stop before leaving the park took us on a short hike past burned trees to Reflection Lake. A beautiful lake, not covered with ice, and visited by Canadian Geese. A pretty end to a nice day!

Last night Bobby noticed that one of the seals was sticking out of one of our oil bypass filters (thanks to our friends at Speedco!). He called Amsoil and they said we had to get that out no matter what it took as it could leak and/or blowout totally. And boy did it take a lot! After close to an hour of working to get the filter loose using two oil filter wrenches, bending steel, and bruising arms, Bobby was finally able to get it off. Turns out they left the old seal in there when they replaced the filter (not counting over tightening it!). Thankfully, the new seal and filter looked okay, so we put it back on. We’ll have to order a replacement one from Amsoil when we stay in one spot long enough.

What an ordeal, but should be okay now.

On the road again! Drove north 155 miles to Corning, CA.

Our first stop was the Speedco for an oil change to the coach. What a nightmare! They weren’t sure where the oil was supposed to go, they didn’t put in the oil we had requested, Bobby even had to help them with changing a fuel filter (one they had to go purchase at Napa after Bobby raised cane!), and then they wanted to charge us more then what we were quoted before hand!

All this in THREE HOURS, what should have taken $40 minutes! Don’t know if this was a weekend rookie crew, just this location or what, but it wasn’t acceptable. After some back & forth with the manager (Wyatt), we ended up paying what we were originally quoted. Oh , and they did an oil analysis before they started which showed our oil was good and didn’t even need to be changed yet!? They never bothered to tell us that. What a shame Speedco didn’t work out. We had read good things about them on the American Coach and other RVing forums.

After that ordeal, we headed about a mile up the road to Heritage RV Park. Nice park, and we received our Passport America discount for the first night.