| I had been dreaming of Oregon for quite a while. Without ever stepping foot inside its borders, I was ready to pack up and move there after college. Alas, that never happened. But I did get to visit it on my vacation, and it was every bit as beautiful as my dreams led me to believe. |
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A quick stop in Klamath Falls was remarkably unexciting. "It's a lie,"
a local teenage girl told us about the Falls. "There isn't any waterfall,
except a small manmade one." On to Crater Lake...
We were completely surprised by the amount of snow amassed atop the collapsed volcano. On July 1st, the snow banks forced the rim road to close and buried most of the trails. Not to be let down, we sought out anything that could be used as a makeshift sled. |
| Finding cheap plastic ponchos at the visitor center, we went sleigh riding down the steep slopes of the crater. Watching the sun set behind the mountains, we cruised down the snowy back of the crater's ridge. It was 97 degrees back in New York. |
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| Earlier in the morning, we were swimming in Lake Shasta. By the afternoon we playing in snow. Only in the northwest. |
| Exploring Oregon was fun. We had lunch in Crystal Lake,
a resort town so picturesque it could make you weep. We talked to a young
man at a dude ranch off Highway 62 who swore he saw Bigfoot during the
winter. "He was 10 feet tall, hairy, and he ran like the wind."
I was glad to arrive in Glide, a sleepytown nestled near the I-5 on the Bogus River. We were on our way to Eugene, to visit my friend (and glass-blower) Chris Perry who I met camping in Deer Creek during summer tour '98. |
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| Chris was living a rich life. Married (to Kari), and with a beautiful two-year-old son (Raven), he blows glass in his shed in the backyard. And Eugene is a fine place to live. The photo below was taken in front of their house on Tyler St. |
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