Road Trip: Day 5

Today was less about the roads and more about the scenery… I don’t think I drove a single “technical” stretch all day. Sure, there were some twists and turns, but much of the day was spent on straight roads just trying to make good time to/from Crater Lake National Park.

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Before I got too far into the wilderness I stopped to top-off my gas tank. This was the first time I’ve bought fuel in Oregon, and having someone else pump my gas was a bit awkward. The attendant did complement the G8, and I was able to get 92 octane, so maybe it’s not a bad concept?

I reached Crater Lake and was able to jump to the head of the entrance line due to my National Parks Pass. I headed-up to the crater and it didn’t take me long to find a good location for my daily photo of the G8.

I also had a nice conversation with a photographer who was shooting on 8×10 film. I felt like such a “tourist” showing-up at 10am with my DSLR… especially since he’d been there since sun-up. We spent a few minutes talking about the lost art of film… and we discussed a few photo locations around Yellowstone. While I didn’t have a tripod or a large format camera, I’m happy with the “snapshots” I came away with.

Despite several attempts, I wasn’t able to meet-up with my parents at Crater Lake. The first try I went the wrong way around the lake… the second I just couldn’t find them in the sea of people around the visitor center. Cell reception was also spotty, so after waiting around a while (and taking some more artsy landscape photos) I headed North out of the park.

That reminds me… I can’t wait for the Labor Day Weekend to be over! I know I spent the day in a National Park, but the number of people was just ridiculous The morning wasn’t bad, but the afternoon was just wall-to-wall people. To put it into perspective… when I left Crater Lake there was a line of cars 8/10ths of a mile long waiting to get in!

While I’m venting, several times today I was surrounded by the most annoying type of driver. It’s one thing to be going slow (I complain about them), but if you’re going to be driving fast… make the pass or get off my ass! I was cruising along going the speed limit, and I understand people who don’t want to drive 55mph, but if you want to drive faster than me… and you have a broken center-line with no oncoming traffic… just pass me! At least three times I pulled off the road to let people by, despite numerous passing lanes… argh!

Tomorrow is scheduled to be a really long day (I have over 8 hours of driving planned), but with all the holiday traffic I have a feeling I might call an audible once I get on the road.