Oregon Diary Part II

I left off on the Oregon adventure pt. 1 with some waterfalls which, to be fair, is also what most of this post will consist of. Here is the continuation of our lil road trip. I made a little video of our time in Oregon. It's pretty rough and I need to get better at remembering to turn my camera on when I see something actually worth filming, but it's a cute little thing that makes me very happy.

 After leaving the Columbia River Gorge, we drove to the Timberline Lodge to see where they filmed some of The Shining. Unfortunately it was incredibly foggy and we could barely see the building itself, but that made it even more spooky. We then continued to a little Airbnb in Sisters and spent the night there. The next morning we met my love Annie in Bend for some breakfast and a meeting with a very mean cat named Leonard. We all wanted to see Smith Rock, so we made our way out there. 

Smith Rock looks like it should be in Utah, honestly. It's a gorgeous collection of rocks that makes it look like a miniature Zion amongst the incredibly flat terrain of Central Oregon. Above is the rock known as Monkey Face, which you can kind of make out, right? We had a gorgeous day there; a river winds through the valley and I just like rocks so it was nice to be surrounded by them.

After Smith Rock we followed Annie down to her home in Crater Lake National Park. She works for the Wildlife department, searching for birds and stuff--basically doing cooler things than I will ever do. I love that woman, let me tell you. Crater Lake is a very surreal place. It's the deepest lake in the United States and was formed out of a collapsed volcano that has been filled with snowmelt over time. It's kind of really scary how still it is, and how you can see basically nothing beyond it. It was pretty rad to see though, despite making me afraid of what lives at the bottom of it.

It was too snowy in Crater Lake to do any real hiking, so Annie took us on yet another tour de waterfalls. We saw like ten huge waterfalls over the course of this trip, and that is enough to make me fall in love with anywhere. Our favorite by far was Watson Falls. We wandered into the forest and saw the stream that ran from it, kind of nodding our heads and not realizing where the actual falls were. Once we hiked further in we realized that Watson Falls was actually a massive waterfall shooting from the side of cliff. The rock faces on these cliffs are so gorgeous, as well as the bright moss that grows around them. Seeing a place so lush and alive is exactly what I needed after months in LA. We got sprayed by the waterfall endlessly and it was a gorgeous kind of baptismal time. 

After a few more waterfalls, we returned to Crater Lake to sit at the lodge with dranks and cheesecake. I just wanted to include some more photos of how eerily still this place is. The water is so blue because it the lake is so deep. The sky almost exactly matches the water so it's easy to feel a little topsy-turvy when you stare out. Seeing the mountains across the lake is almost like looking at a pulse in a hospital--it's so oddly symmetrical but kind of haunting.

Ian and I went to check out Oregon because we wanted to see if it was a place that we would potentially move to. I'm not sure it's the right place for us at the moment, but it was a stunning reminder of the beauty of earth and water. A reminder I certainly needed after shoving my face so far into books this year that I could barely see straight. I hope I can visit Oregon again soon, and I need to remember I really can't go very long without moss and waterfalls.