Enjoying Oregon…

Next morning (July 31st, 2015) I leave Orland and head due North on I-5. A few hours later and I exit I-5 and head NE on US-97. This puts me on the path towards Walla Walla. My plan was to stop and visit the Ice Caves near Tule Lake but when I’d checked the weather early in the morning, I found that it was going to be another scorcher, at least part of the way, and most likely near the caves. And though I would be comfortable down inside the caves (there’s ice down there!), I was fairly certain when I returned from visiting them the RV would be very uncomfortable and would take hours to get its temperature down. Even with my makeshift AC running while I was gone.

Well, OK, I thought, I’ll skip the Ice Caves until later in the year. This trip I’ll just drive up to near Crooked River Ranch in Oregon and stay at a little RV park up there in the foothills of the Cascades, off the beaten track. Advantage was that I’d get there around 4 or 5 pm while most of the travel day was in the foothills where I’d get some relief from the heat of the valley floors in California.

And sure enough, by the time I get to Shasta Lake, outside air temps are still fairly reasonable. In the 80’s. And it’s around noon.

Hey, that bridge to nowhere you’ve heard about…

Roads are in pretty good shape, but it seems that winter here does a number on the blacktop and cement so they work on the roads a lot up here. Which means there’s a large established bureaucracy coupled with powerful construction companies so they’re always ‘improving’ around here. At taxpayers expense of course. I’m not complaining. This section of I-5 in the winter needs all the modern road aids available.

I like seeing this pointy mountain when I’m traveling I-5. Means I’m getting close to Oregon. It’s Mt. Shasta.

Big ol’ volcanic cone. And just a few miles from here is the turn off into Weed, then onto US-97.

Just an hour and a half later, I’m in Klamath Falls. Or K-Falls as we Oregonians call it.

Here’s where I could turn off to go to Crater Lake. It’s only like 45 minutes from here. I really wanted to do that, but I hadn’t done any research the night before and didn’t know where I’d spend the night. So it’s on my list for ‘some other time’. Maybe later this year.

Here I am passing Lake Klamath. Thing is huge.A few hours later, at around 4 pm, I take the exit to Crooked River Ranch, follow my GPS and soon I’m at the RV park. River Rim RV Park.

 Thing about this park, it’s quite a ways out in the boonies…for some people. It’s over 8 miles from the freeway on twisty, uppy downy roads and I know lots of RV’ers look for parks right next to the freeway. There’s open ground around here. No McD’s or any other recognisable chain. That’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, I get all settled in, discover that they do have pretty good WiFi, I can watch a movie during slack hours for instance. And the area is geologically fascinating, facilities are clean, and there’s a pretty nice bar within bike distance, so I decide to stay longer than the two nights I’d already paid for. Paid for 10 days here. And most of the time I spent here up in Walla Walla it was scorching hot! Over 100°F every day. And only cooling to 80° at night. Gah. Well, it’s still over two weeks to the family reunion so staying here made sense.

After the heat I’d been experiencing over the last several months down south, it was refreshing to stay here in the foothills of the Cascades at 3600′ (1100 meters). The 3rd day I was here, it had cooled down a bunch, nice cloudy overcast for most of each morning. Even had a refreshing sprinkle of rain one morning. Ahhh. Just what I was looking for. Being in the foothills, naturally the evenings were very comfortable even if the days got warm. Cool enough at night that I added a thin comforter to the bed.

Second morning, as I began to pull myself out of bed, gah…a dizzy spell hit me hard and I flopped back into bed. What the hell? Took three attempts to finally make it out of bed. The dizzyness sort of stayed right there on the periphery of sensing after I was up and moving. If I did a quick head move, looked up, or stood up, Woooweee. So turned to WebMD and found that dehydration can cause that. Also a virus can cause it. I figured that all those days of hanging around in the desert heat of California, and the trip that day where I’d driven for hours in 108°F heat, had caused my body to apparently reach a threshold. I hadn’t been hydrating enough. Oh, I had seen signs but hadn’t really heeded them and now was suffering the consequences. Yeah, I’m a dummy.

Turns out, that at my age, the body doesn’t seem to recover as quickly from dehydration as it used to. I was pouring lots of water down my throat all that day but even then, it took several days to recover a sense of balance that didn’t falter on occasion. Like when I was standing next to the canyon! Whoa. Spinning, dizzy feeling next to a 200′ cliff to get a good picture wasn’t a bright idea. Past those signs everywhere stating how dangerous the edge was. So for several days (that’s right, days), I’d try to go over to the cliff for pictures and would get all dizzy like so I’d have to back off from the edge. Holding the camera to eye level and focusing on the display screen made it worse.

This is about as close as I felt comfortable getting to the canyon edge. And I would get woosie just standing here. With time, and adequate hydration, the dizzy spells seemed to slowly taper off. I could ride my bike without trouble, walk around, drive the RV, but if I’d do anything quickly, jerk my head around, stand, get out of bed, then I’d get all woosie. Kind of a interesting sensation. Only thing that bothered me was not being able to get close to the canyon edge and get some good shots in the morning or evening when there’s good lighting.

Next time, more shots from the Crooked River Ranch area.