Friday September 13

We started our day with a nice breakfast in the St Bernard B&B Lodge. The owner was quite helpful in giving us some recommendations for things to see on our way to Crater Lake today. We disregarded some of them and set out to go back into Lassen Park. We stopped at the snow gauge which I recall was at 10 ft the last time we were here about 12 years ago.

The morning light provided some great views of Lassen Peak.

Our target for today was end up near Crater Lake in Oregon so we didn't have time to do a really long hike so we decided to hike into Kings Creek Falls, about 6 km but a significant descent and climb on the way back out.

There were several opportunities to view some of the cascades.

The cold water of the creek felt good after the climb out. Temperatures were in the high 70's.

We drove to the north exit from the park and stopped at a few of the interpretative areas on our way through and ended up at Manzanita Lake for a picnic lunch. Rumbles of thunder hurried us up as a little thunderstorm moved in.

We encountered some deer grazing in the picnic area.

We packed up and got on the road to hopefully stop in at Burney Falls State Park for another hike and view of the falls. As we approached, another thunderstorm approached and we decided to press on.

We had some great views of Mt Shasta as we approached Oregon.

The descent from the 8000 ft elevation at Lassen to the 3000 ft elevation of the valley brought temperatures up to 97F. After entering Oregon, we decided to take a quick detour off of I5 and have a quick look around Ashland. We did a walking tour of Lithia Park.

Saw some more tame deer.

This was followed by a stroll up main street. A blend of theatre goers, hippies and trendy shops.

At around 6:00 pm we decided it was time to move on to the Maple Leaf Motel in Shady Cove Oregon. A pretty nice place in a small village. Room was better than expected and the Belize owner very friendly and wondered if we picked it because we were Canadian. We ended up at a local Mexican restaurant for another good dinner before returning to download today's photos and push out this edition of the blog.

Here is the route of today's trip.