For Memorial Day weekend, Sam and I headed west! Now that I live on the East Coast, it’s so wild to me how long it takes to get to the Pacific. It’s a 5 or 6 hour flight just to get across the country. We took a redeye flight to San Francisco and then a short hop up to Medford, where we met up with some friends. Our friend Chelsea has been working her way through the US National Parks, and it’s been fun to tag along when we can.
For this trip, we based ourselves near Klamath Falls. I wasn’t sure what to expect – the thing about small towns in America is that there is a huge variation on how well they’re doing, economically, and so sometimes you have the charming, Stars Hollow-style Main Street, the platonic ideal of a small town, and other times you have a version of that that’s been abandoned and left to rot for 40 years. In any case, Klamath Falls seems to be thriving because of its proximity to Crater Lake, and it seems to function as a bit of a hub for the hikers and tourists in the area. It’s very charming! There were a lot of nice local restaurants and bars, and we tried several while we were there. We ended up at the farmer’s market one of the mornings when we went into town for coffee as well.
Our top priority was to visit Crater Lake, so that was the first thing on our itinerary! As it turns out, late May is still winter season in Crater Lake, so we were a bit more limited in what we were able to do and see while we were there. I had been once before, a long time ago, and my parents and I were able to walk all the way down to the edge of the lake because we visited in late summer. On this trip, there was still a lot of snow, and so most of the roads around the crater were closed.
I’m glad to have gone in both seasons, because there are pros and cons to both. There’s obviously much more to do in the summer. I wish we had spikes or snowshoes for this one, because I would have happily walked along the trails if I wasn’t afraid of slipping all over the snowpack. But having the snow surrounding the lake was absolutely spectacular!
After we walked around for a bit, got our stamps, and had lunch, we had basically done everything that was possible to do at Crater Lake, so we headed back to Klamath Falls. We went to the Klamath County Museum, which was cute. It was in what appeared to be an old high school gymnasium, and you could still see the lines of the basketball court on the floor. It was fairly thorough considering how rural Klamath is, with a little bit of all of their local history and a section on the natural history of the area as well.
The next day, we crossed the border into California! It was less than an hour to Lava Beds National Monument. After the snow of Crater Lake, it was strange to be in that level of heat. Lava Beds has a lot of lava tubes and caves, including ice caves because of the way that they’re structured. Walking from the surface down into where the ice never melts was a wild experience.
We also went kayaking in Klamath Lake! I love kayaking, so it was nice to get on the water. It was a beautiful place to do it. There were mountain views all around.
Our final activity of the weekend was going for a wine tasting! Oregon has some fantastic wineries, mostly in Willamette Valley south of Portland, and we were excited to try some local wine. We found one close to Klamath that had great reviews and went for a tasting. I also did a tasting of olive oil and balsamic, which was a fun experience.
All in all, an excellent weekend! It’s harder to go all the way to the west coast for a weekend trip now, but this definitely made the long flight worth it. Oregon has so much natural beauty, and it was great to explore it with some of our friends!