Events...

Crater Lake

It's like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, awestruck. These photos won't do it justice, you gotta go for yourself. Aaron and I decided to do something alone together for the first time in years. We decided to climb Watchman Overlook. It goes from 7400 to 8056 feet, a mile and a half round trip. Above, it's hard to see but the little cabin where you end up is at the top right.

Aaron showing off the view from 8056 feet. I don't think he realized that we were really going all the way up but I think he felt good that we did, at least I hope so.

Aaron discovers a more civilized way to write your name in the snow on the path up to the Watchman Overlook.

It was hard not to whip out the luge and rip down the mountain; we did it the hard way though-walking.

Here's a close up of the cabin at the top-Watchman Overlook.

The color is unbelievable; it's all rain and snow water, pure and clean.

A person could stay and just look for hours and we did.

It's truly azure, sapphire blue.

Diamond Lake

The closest place to stay outside of Crater Lake is Diamond Lake and we stayed here at Diamond Lake Lodge. It reminded me of Big Sur Lodge and many other state park lodges...I love that.

You can see why it's called Diamond Lake although I haven't done it justice in these photos.

The morning we left to go for our second time around Crater Lake the boys got to play bumper boats and had great fun.

Coos Bay

So the deal with Coos Bay is that north of there are all these giant dunes. We found a place where you can rent three or four wheeler atvs or dune buggies or dune trucks and then you go out onto the dunes yourself. Not being the beachy, sandy girl, I let the guys go without me and they had a great time. That's them in the middle heading out. "But what will you do while we're gone?", they asked. Hummmmm, I managed. It was cool but the sun was warm so I laid out on the wooden bench in front of the place and read and relaxed. As I said, I managed.

Matt and Aaron sand surfing.

This young man highly recommends this place for all your dune dragging needs.

The Lighthouse

Next was the lighthouse with this big old boat and some men fishing for buggers in front of it.

Nice lighthouse, one of our first on the West Coast. We've been to many, many on the East Coast. We've got a thing going about them now.

Down the road was another lighthouse but we got distracted by this beach. We spent a couple of hours here, the boys playing in the water and lots of interesting rocks, seaweed, trees, and fauna for me to study and enjoy.

This is how little Aaron and Matt look on the beach compared to the mountain edging up to the sea.The boys getting into the surf.

The Pool

They have a totally cool swim park in Corvallis. I don't know what other pools they have as this is the only one the family has let us see; I'm sure you can see why. There's a separate part where there are huge inter tubes where you can just float and tan or torture others. Here Aaron and Matt are torturing Lucas' travel buddy, Jovis, chasing him all around. It was a question as to who was wearing who out first. And this huge water slide. To the left is all manner of jungle gyms, climbing equipment, stationary (other than being able to aim at the moms' faces as they come out of the water...I still want to give that kid a wedgie) water guns, water falls, and more fun than a kid can have in one day.

So we made a point of going twice this time which is much lower than who knows how many times the last visit, but staying over 3 hours each time made up for it.