Ashland

Thursday - Drive to Oregon - Burney falls, Jot dean ice cave, Lava beds national monument, Oregon

Our destination for the day was our cabin near Ashland oregon. Taking I-5 would have been the quickest route, but road trips are about taking the path less travelled, no?

Purni had heard good things from a friend about Jot Dean ice caves, and Lava beds national monument was also near there. We planned a route to visit both those spots.

The drive took us through mountain roads, past Lassen park, and on CA 44. Along the way, we spotted signs for Burney falls, which sounded interesting. Some quick googling later, we decided to make a pit stop there.

And what a glorious pit stop it was! Definitely one of the highlights of the day. The falls were spectacular. The short hike to the base had better views as we descended, and the spray from the water made everything much cooler than at the surface / parking lot level. Taking turns again because of Rango, the boys and I made the first foray down to enjoy the water and the views. Aarav left early to be with Purni, but took a second trip down when Purni took her turn to enjoy the waterfall. Tejas and I stayed back at the parking lot, and conversed with some park rangers and a Lady through hiking the PCT and refueling at the waterfalls.

Leaving Burney falls, we started a hour long drive to the ice cave. This drive took us, quite definitively, off the beaten path, along what felt like logging roads and backwoods roads. The roads were quite bumpy at times, and we were often surprised to see another car along this route. Jot Dean cave, turned out to be just a small pull out off the side of the road, with no real facilities. Undeterred, we improvised an Picnic spot for lunch, and post lunch took the short walk to and into the cave.

Being the middle of summer, I did not expect for there to be any ice left, and while there were no icicles, I was surprised to find that there still was ice on the floor of the cave. The boys, Rango and I made the clamber down to the floor of the cave, while Purni stayed midway in and kept a watchful eye over us.

After our fill of the ice cave, we continued onward to Lava beds national monument, which was kind-of on the way. lava beds definitely felt like a place that we should have prepared for better. Having headlamps and helmets would have allowed us, our courage notwithstanding, a better ability to explore all the lava tubes and caves that were open for exploring. We limited ourself to the entrances of caves, and the one cave that was well lit and did get to experience some of it. But there was a lot more left unseen here.

We drove past the barren Tule Lake and across scenic farmlands and forests of southern oregon to reach Green Springs, where we were going to spend a few days in a cabin.

Friday - Chill and a Preview of Ashland

We were all super tired from the long day of driving to Oregon, and so we decided to have a chill day at home relaxing. We enjoyed the cabin, the boys filled up the hot tub and got in (I think) and I took a nap along with Rango. In the late afternoon, we decided to head into nearby ashland to get some groceries and dinner.

Ashland co-op was where we ended up, which turned out to be a pretty nice store. Purni and the boys did a bit of shopping, buying us all dinner and a picnic lunch for the next day’s outing to Crater lake. Rango and I walked around the neighbourhood and tried to stay dry in the sudden summer storm that had brewed up. We had seen lightning during our drive in, and the wind was really gusting along with brief showers here and there. The smell of wet earth and gusty winds were really fun to experience.

We drove home in the post-rain calm to some nice dinner.

Saturday - Crater Lake

We had decided to go to crater lake on Saturday. The drive was mostly through wooded forests in Oregon and was super scenic. Both Hyatt reservoir and Hyatt prairie lake along our route to crater lake were completely dry (from what we could see) and left us a little disappointed. The drive was really fun though, since the roads were empty, and the weather was pleasant and overcast. We reached crater lake around 11, and after a pit-stop at the rim village visitor center and our first views of the crater, we decided to drive clockwise around the crater and enjoy the day that way.

Our first order of business though was lunch, so we backed the car up to a viewpoint by the side of the road, threw a towel over the stone wall, and improvised a picnic there with a full view of the crater. We met and fed a pair of ground squirrels while we ate too.

Post lunch, and a failed trip to the pumice desert (there wasn’t much to see there), we continued our drive with stops for photos. Purni had 2 more things on the agenda: A hike to Plaikni falls, and a stop at the pinnacles overlook.

Plaikni falls trail ended up being not dog friendly, so Rango and I opted to hang out in the car while Purni and the boys hiked to the falls and back. Once they were done, we drove over and enjoyed views of the volcanic tubes that were called the pinnacles.

Satisfied with a day at crater lake, and after a brief stop for Tejas to get his Junior ranger badge, Purni drove us all the way home.

Sunday - Ashland

I had read that Asland was famous for its Shakespeare festival and for being a very artsy town. Tejas was super interested to experience that. Sunday was our day for that experience.

The forecast was for another hot day, so we tried to set off a little early and drove to Ashland. Since all of us had exhausted our reading material in the first week of our trip, our first stop was to a used book store: The book exchange, where we spent quite some time stocking up on books for the rest of the vacation.

We walked around downtown Ashland, visiting some stores, until we found ourselves at the Lithia artists market behind a strip of restaurants near Ashland creek. After stopping in some stores, and admiring the artwork, we decided to eat Lunch. As we ate lunch we were starting to feel the heat creeping up, and so after lunch, and some hurried art purchases, we decided to call it a day and drove back to our cabin to cool off and enjoy some dining in.

The rain and lightning that we saw on Friday had apparently also been responsible for some new wildfires in Northern california (McCash, River complex fires) and the smoke from which was starting to float up to us in southern oregon. The skies were grey and the sun had a yellowish tint from all the smoke.

Monday - Touvelle state park

Another hot day on Monday, so we planned a shorter day and decided on a morning visit to TouVelle state park along the rogue river.

The park was a short drive north of Medford. We were starting to see the smoke everywhere from the fires that the lightning had started from our first day in the Ashland area.

We got to the park relatively early in the morning. It was pretty empty, with only a couple of cars in a large parking lot. Half the park was closed off, since the Forest firefighters were using that half as a base to coordinate fire fighting activities across this part of Oregon, or so we were told.

We found a nice path down to the edge of the stream which was forked off the bigger Rogue river, and spent the morning wading through the water, exploring, and watching other kids have fun rafting down the shallow stream on their make-shift floats.

Tejas and I did a bit of exploring, and walked across a blackberry bush covered island, dodging all the vicious thorns to find the main river, as well as walking up to a dam wall at the head of the stream that we were wading through.

We ate a picnic lunch in the park, and decided that it was time to head home, since the sun was getting significantly warmer.