Day One: Port Townsend, WA to Ashland, OR

Well! After lazy departure from Port Townsend, around 11 AM we made pretty good time covering just under 500 miles. WA-101 was beautiful, as always and we took I-5 through the boring Northern parts of Oregon. We would have liked to take 101 most of the way through both states, but we were trying to make it to Ashland by around 8:30 in order to observe a production as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Oregon has the most unfortunate drivers I’ve witnessed in quite some time. Tailgaiting at highway speeds, failing to signal, ridiculous! We ate at Carl’s Jr. another first for me. It was delicious!

It was getting dark when we arrived in Ashland, so finding a camp-site and getting the tent up was our first priority. We stopped at a 7-11 and Amber found someone with some information on the local camping areas. We followed the gentleman she met, Larry, to Emigrant Lake Recreation Area and staked our claim on site number 16, right next to our new friend. Larry is from Klamath Falls and provided us with a lot of great local knowledge while we conversed around the campfire. We took a quick tour around the campgrounds, despite it being quite dark. The lake was quite warm, we dipped our toes in to test it before returning to the tent to turn in. Around 11:30, as we were getting into the tent, I realized that someone was still playing music (crappy music) loudly. In Washington state parks if you so much as make a peep once quite hours have begun, the camp-host/park rangers will attempt to implode your head with their superpowers of asshattery. These people shouted (literally) the most disgusting, lewd, demeaning, ignorant things at one and other all night long. At one point they started playing with a taser. One of them eventually tased himself, but that was hardly justice for a night spent mostly awake.

Today (day two), we will be traveling East to Klamath Falls, where we will meet up with Amber’s uncle (who owns a restaurant), and Crater Lake, where none of us has ever been (at least, as far as I know). Larry said that the Crater Lake area gets pretty cool, so the plan is to camp in Klamath after we visit the lake.