Cray-Cray Crater Adventures!

So this weekend was quite the adventure! For many, many reasons…

Quality Time
For one, this is the first time since before my trip to Colorado that Caitlin and I went on a weekend adventure. Don't' get me wrong. We've done tons of amazingly awesome and fun things in the last month. But it was great to get away on a wanderlust-ing road trip together. (Side note, we know, it sounds like we're married.)

Ashland

After leaving early Friday morning (don't worry, we did stop for coffee first), we headed straight for Ashland, OR. Caitlin has been there many times, so it was fun to see it through her eyes while we also got to explore some new things together. It was pretty smoky from wildfires in the area, but luckily it cleared off as the day went by to reveal some pretty gorgeous hills surrounding the town. An afternoon spent in cute, bougie coffee shops, boutiques, and tea houses was punctuated by a walk through Lithia Park and a super yummy dinner at a small restaurant in Talent, OR. 

Crater Lake

The whole purpose of this trip was to visit Crater Lake. For those of you who don't know, which was me until I moved here, Crater Lake is 1,943 feet deep. Making it the deepest lake in the U.S. and one of the 10 deepest in the world! Caitlin and I talked about going since spring, and I'm so so so happy we made it work! I knew it was a big destination and from pictures I saw how pretty it was, but I didn't necessarily get why it was so special. I've seen tons of alpine lakes out hiking. However, this place is pretty damn amazing. There are tons of hikes around the rim of the lake, as well as plenty others within the national forest. So there are plenty of angles from which to gaze upon the amazing indigo blue of the lake. Seriously, I've never seen blue like that outside of the Greek isles. We started with Garfield Peak, a 3.5-mile hike from the lodge that gains about 1,000' elevation. You see the lake pretty much the whole time, and dump out onto a couple of vistas (of the lake and surrounding mountains) that are just stunning! 

Then we headed over to Mt Scott, on the other side of the lake. It's a 5-mile hike that gains about 1,200' in elevation. Though we were tired and feeling elevation some (it's the highest point of the park at 8,938'), we made surprisingly great time! This hike was different in that you didn't see the lake until you got up to the top, but you had gorgeous mountain views all the way while hiking in pretty alpine desert landscape. The top traverse to the gazebo was hands down the best part! 

Late night road trip
So great trip, right? Absolutely. Except… Something in the universe must have known what was happening. My car notified me I needed an oil change while we were down there. We'd planned on getting it done Sunday morning before driving back, but something made us stop on the way back to Medford/Ashland and get it done 10 minutes before they closed. We showered all the dust off and went to a yummy tapas place for dinner. Only to decide at 11pm that night to drive back to Portland, which is 4-4.5 hours away. This was not a whim, mind you. There was some sketchiness going on with our Air B&B. So we drive 4.5 hours to Ashland Friday, 2 hours to Crater Lake, 30 minutes to Mt Scott, 2 hours back to Medford all on Saturday, to then drive 4 hours back to Portland Saturday night, where we roll in jamming to Queen after 3am.

All in all, a fabulous trip! We've decided to make this an annual sojourn. To do a different hike, different hotel/campsite/town/vineyard, different season, different time of day every year. Oregon, our love affair continues!

To see more (and more and more) pictures, follow @lizwilsonyoga!