Crater Lake trip 2011

[sharbours]

We have been planning our trip to the Crater Lake area since January with our good friends Suzie & Aaron. This will be our longest trip ever (10 days), and the furthest we've gone away from home towing the trailers. Our plan was to drive to Sean's cousin's house near Glendale, Oregon and spend a couple of days visiting before continuing on to Ft. Klamath for the rest of the week. We were also looking forward to stopping at Sutton RV in Eugene to visit the parts store & wander through the new Airstreams. (We love ours, but it's fun to look!)

Two hours into our trip, with Suzie, Aaron & their 1979 Ambassador about a half mile ahead of us, a Toyota Prius passes us, horn honking away. We look over, and there is a lady hanging out the passenger window yelling something and pointing back at our trailer. Never a good sign!!! Sean looks in the rear view mirror just in time to see one of our tires go poof, and smoke coming from the wheel well. We pulled off the road and discovered this :


Fortunately, there was no damage to the exterior skin, but definitely some to the wheel well. After contacting Suzie & Aaron and some frantic internet searches (I LOVE my iPhone!), we located a Les Schwab Tire Center in Junction City that was still open. Sean removed the shredded tire - boy, am I glad we have two axles - and we headed off to Les Schwab.


The guys there were wonderful to us! We bought two new tires, and a used rim to mount the old undamaged tire on as a spare; something we'd been planning to do but hadn't gotten around to yet. We'll replace the other two tires soon. (We also found out that the tire didn't fail on it's own; we picked up a screw somewhere along the way.) We were back on the road in less than an hour, and made it to our cousin's place before dark. We didn't get to see the new Airstreams, though.

Sunday, we continued our trip and arrived at Crater Lake Resort late in the day. We spent the day at Crater Lake on Tuesday - what a beautiful place! The weather was amazing; sunny & 80 degrees.


We've spent the rest of the trip exploring Klamath Falls and the surrounding area. Today, Sean & Aaron got up early to go to 4 Mile Lake, and came home with dinner!


Tomorrow we will start the trek home, stopping overnight at the Wildlife Safari Park in Winston, Oregon, and arrive home Sunday. All in all, it's been a great trip!!!

Sharon

[valmog]

Les Schwab is a wonderful company to work with..they've saved us countless times, too!

Your photos of the park are amazing! Crater Lake is one of my favorite places to visit in Oregon - in fact we're heading there in a few weeks. We're hoping to take the boat out to Wizard Island as we've never that before. This will also be our first time camping there.

What did you think of the campgrounds?

Have a safe trip back home!

[az-streamer]

we also spent a few days at crater lake in sept 2010 and HIGHLY recommend it to all. A bit off the beaten track [esp. if your travelling up from AZ] but well worth the trip.







later we drove to the coast and stayed at beachside SP. also very nice and you can walk right across the dunes to the shore.



should be on everyone's 'to visit' list

[SilverCottage]

Winter is nice too! This was the end of October 2010.

[webspinner]

Crater Lake was on our "To Do" list this summer. A week before our early July reservations, they called and canceled them. The campground was under 10 feet of ice!
No chance of it thawing before our arrival.

We went to Mount Rainier instead and had a spectacular, cloudless visit.