Oregon Adventures: Journey to Crater Lake: Day 1

in Pinmapple3 years ago

Read this post on TravelFeed.io for the best experience



Hello Hiveians!

It's been a little while since my last post, but I have a new adventure to share with you all! I just got back from Oregon, and what an adventure it was!

We had been looking into going to Crater Lake for almost 3 years now, and we had plans to go last year, tickets bought and everything, but then the wildfires hit and we almost had to cancel the entire trip. Luckily, the coast cleared up last minute and we did that instead and it was still an amazing trip!

But now it was time to try again this year. I bought my tickets, we did our research, made our plans, and then all we had left to do was hope the state didn't burn down again or the weather didn't get cataclysmic (spoiler: it kind of did).

The day had arrived, bags were packed, and all that was left to do was get on the plane and hope for the best, but at this point, I had already been watching for a few days as a storm and cold front had been rolling in for the 2 main days of our trip.

I arrived in Portland that night. The plan was to hit the road before sunrise to get some shots in the Gorge next morning, so right to sleep it was.

Woke up at 5am, packed the car, and set off towards the River Gorge. We made our first stop at a high point overlooking most of the gorge. The weather wasn't the most ideal, but we made it work.

After spending some time there, we made our way further into the Gorge to some of the hikes we had scoped out. Long story short, most of the hikes we wanted to do were all closed because of fires from years ago, which was very disappointing and our first setback. We discussed our options and decided we should just head down towards our camping destination and make some stops along the way.

We headed down through Mt.Hood Forrest area, and went to go check out Mt.Hood. It was pretty bare, and had hardly any snow on it which was unfortunate, but it did have some very interesting clouds around it.

From there we decided we'd try to look for another angle of Mt.Hood, and upon arriving on the backside, we noticed a good amount of wildfire smoke had come in. The haze ruined the shots and was unpleasant, so back in the car we went.

After a couple supply pit stops, we had arrived at our camp spot for the first night, Smith Rock State Park!

Although this is the dispersed camping area, that is not my tent, because I didn't have a tent. I decided to try hammock camping on this trip, which we will see turn out to be an interesting decision to say the least.

We set up camp, and it was hot. Like, 90+ degrees and I had no warm weather clothes because I was mainly focusing on the cold weather. Great.

After we were all set, we went to explore the park a bit. Here's some of the shots I got.

After a somewhat brief exploration, it was time to head back to camp and get ready for bed. We had early plans the next day, and we still weren't sure how things were going to play out, so we wanted to be well rested.

On our way back, we saw the smoke starting to drift in, and while it wasn't welcome, the following sunset was pretty amazing because of it.

After that, I put my sleeping bag into the hammock, made sure my rain tarp was sturdy, as it was supposed to rain a bit over night, and prepared for my first night as essentially a dangling meat burrito for the local wildlife. Fun.

It was quiet. Very quiet. Until it wasn't. So many unknown noises, animals doing god knows what. I managed to get to sleep despite the uneasiness. And then around 4am I got woken up by a huge gust of wind that hit my hammock and rain cover. It startled me a bit, but nothing too much. But after being awake I could hear more gusts rolling across the wide open desert plains. They sounded loud and strong. I was half expecting a dust devil to sweep me up, but after a couple gusts hit, I saw they weren't as strong as they sounded, but still was a bit uneasy. Then the rain started, nothing too heavy, but enough to make it that much harder to fall back asleep.

Well, I think that's a good place to stop for this entry. Next, we'll pickup where we left off here and run into our first big debacle to tackle.

I hope you enjoyed this entry, and be sure to follow along for the next installment. Let me know, what were your favorite images? The lush River Gorge, or the arid desert of Smith Rock?

In the meantime, you can find more of my work on Instagram, @SeanGoldPhotos, or at www.SeanGold.com.

Best,

Sean


View this post on TravelFeed for the best experience.
Sort:  

a place with an amazing view, I think it was full of struggle to reach this place, and the results were extraordinary, greetings from Medan, Indonesia

Thank you! Very fitting you're from Indonesia, as my trip in Oregon was all about volcanoes, and Indonesia was mentioned a lot due to all the volcanoes you have! I hope to visit some day!

Beautiful shots my friend! :D
I want to go on an adventur aswell! :D

Thank you! You should! How are things in Denmark with covid? I imagine you have to be doing better than us in the USA. I can't wait to come back to Europe, hopefully next year!

Well. We haven't had any restrictions since the 10 of September xD
So I would say its going pretty good here :p

I really should! I just started a new job, so it might be a while before I get known vaccation days to travel somewhere where I don't need to stay at a hotel for 14 days xD

The photos are incredible, nice work!! Hard to pick a favourite to be honest. Might I ask what camera you are using?

Thank you! And of course, so most of these are actually on my Olympus EM10-ii micro 4/3's camera. I just started using this camera a lot for my travels due to it's small size and ease of use compared to my more bulky Sony A7ii, which I brought too.

Wow sounds like it was definitely an adventure all round!

You got a huge array of really stunning shots regardless of the weather conditions anyway, so you dd well.

Such a beautiful spot and such a shame that there looks to be so much black around from the bushfires still....

I look forward to the next chapter!

Thank you! And it is sad to see some of the areas that were just completely scorched from the fires over the last few years. It's also a bit uplifting to see how some areas have recovered so quickly, although they will never be back to what they were. Glad you enjoyed and stay tuned for the next installment!

Yeah totally agree and I know what you mean.
My home town was one of the ones that was completely surrounded for weeks during our xmas 2020 bushfires (Cobargo- the town next door burnt down with a lot of my old school mates homes and shops too...)

And although it looks great and green and artistic as it grows back, there becomes a second danger as our tree are Eucalypt trees with the leaves full of oil, and now that the leaves are growing right up the tree trunk instead of having that flowering head of branches and leaves at the top, that means when it burns again, there will be nothing left at all...

I took these photos from through the bus window on the way back up there exactly a year after the fire

BUSH3.png

BUSH2.png

When normally it would look like this....which I took through the bus window as I was getting out of 'dodge'...

bush.png

So yeah, I hope that yours recover much quicker over there.

It's the poor animals that I feel sorry for. They estimate that we lost about 3 billion animals here- from native- Koalas, Roos, Dingoes to cattle/sheep and everything in between...

Well I look forward to chapter ??? 😃 and until then, take care and stay safe!

Beautiful landscape photography 💪

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed!

Congratulations, your post has been added to Pinmapple! 🎉🥳🍍

Did you know you have your own profile map?
And every post has their own map too!

Want to have your post on the map too?

  • Go to Pinmapple
  • Click the get code button
  • Click on the map where your post should be (zoom in if needed)
  • Copy and paste the generated code in your post (Hive only)
  • Congrats, your post is now on the map!

Congratulations @seangold! You received the biggest smile and some love from TravelFeed! Keep up the amazing blog. 😍 Your post was also chosen as top pick of the day and is now featured on the TravelFeed.io front page.

Thanks for using TravelFeed!
@smeralda (TravelFeed team)

PS: You can now search for your travels on-the-go with our Android App. Download it on Google Play

Great shots!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed!

Great post ... we would like you to appreciate our content we are new to the ecosystem. This is part of the content we create. https://peakd.com/hive-184437/@brouwolf/jvptszbw

Greetings

@brouwolf

Congratulations @seangold! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You made more than 200 comments.
Your next target is to reach 300 comments.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:

Hive Power Up Day - October 1st 2021 - Hive Power Delegation
Hive Power Up Month - Feedback from Day 25

Hiya, @ybanezkim26 here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Top 3 in Daily Travel Digest #1337.

Your post has been manually curated by the @pinmapple team. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting other authors like yourself and us so we can keep the project going!

Become part of our travel community: