The trip to Diamond Lake (technically located in Chamuth, Oregon) was only 78 miles. Easy. We stayed briefly at the Diamond Lake RV Resort, a nice, older place with accommodating people. Naturally, our first priority was finding a site with southern-sky access for our rooftop satellite dish. (Have I mentioned that Oregon has a lot of trees?)
At the third site we tried, we decided to give up and use the portable dish we have. We haven’t used it in more than a year and never with the new DirecTV equipment we got in March. After struggling mightily to make it work, I called DirecTV for help. A frustrating half-hour later, a supervisor advised me our new equipment was so complicated that using a portable dish instead of the built-in one would not be a good idea because of the number of adjustments that would be necessary to reactivate our main dish two days later when we got to a park without a tree problem. So we gave up and faced two days without live TV. I wasn’t sure we would survive that, but it turned out that we could.
The reason for staying where we did was to get easy access to Crater Lake, which was only a few miles away.
I don‘t know what I expected, but the lake and its surroundings were a big surprise. The lake is a beautiful blue color, thanks to the refractive effect of clear water that is 1,900 feet deep. It is a perfect circle, six miles in diameter, lying in a collapsed volcano cone. What remains of the cone is spectacular, rugged rock.
We proceeded to the lodge, which is run by Xanterra. One of the first employees we saw was Courtney Dixon, who worked with us at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He was the kitchen inventory manager there; he is the Retail Director at the Crater Lake Lodge. It was good to see him again.
The lodge was built in 1915, and apparently in a shoddy manner---such that it was virtually falling apart by the late ‘80s. In a massive reconstruction effort, it was rebuilt to look exactly like the original. The interior is magnificent, with beautiful, polished wood, but the exterior is not so hot, architecturally. Still, it’s well worth seeing.
Our next stop was Florence, Oregon, a 178-mile trip that took a long time due to road work and curvy roads. We spent at least a half hour staring at flaggers (that’s what they call them in Oregon, a very PC state) holding their Stop/Slow signs. The curvy roads went through some beautiful scenery in the Umpqua National Forest and along the Umpqua and Rogue Rivers.
Florence is on the coast, where we stayed at the South Jetty Thousand Trails Preserve. Nice place. Again, our priority was satellite access, and we were sent to a site which, we were assured, had rooftop-dish satellite access. (Again, Oregon has a lot of very tall trees.) After valiant tries at backing into the space (finally being helped by Rocky, our neighbor who was a long-haul truck driver in his former life), we determined that our dish wouldn’t work there. We gritted our teeth and settled in for another non-TV night. The next morning, while walking the dogs, Becky found an empty site that looked perfect. We moved there and, Voila!!!!, we had TV. Hurray!
That night we went to Rocky's (and his wife, Maggie's) site for tacos. Their friend Fred was there, as well. He and Maggie teach at the same school in Tacoma, Washington, and Fred travels with them in his own trailer. We had a very good time with the three of them.
They left for home Friday morning.
On Friday we visited Florence, which is where the Siuslaw (pronounced see-ooh-slaw, with the accent on the ooh) River empties into the ocean. It's a cute old port town, and we enjoyed walking through the historic part of town.
In the afternoon, we visited the nearby (about 1/2 mile away) Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. There are miles of huge sand dunes in this area. They are quite impressive. According to the posted information, the dunes were formed by decomposing mountains along the river, and the river carried the sand downstrean to the coast, where wind then piled it up.
On the way home from the dunes, we stopped at the RV store next door and bought two new directors' chairs for our patio setup. Our present pair, which we bought at Lake Gaston, are getting a little seedy.
It started drizzling Friday night and did not let up all day Saturday. Saturday night we rented a Red Box movie called Something Borrowed, because we thought the rain would continue to block our satellite reception. We were right. It was an OK romantic comedy as those go, these days. Ginnifer Goodwin was adorable, and Kate Hudson was a believable snot.
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