Hitchhiking USA & Europe: Chap 2 (Oregon)

---September 8th 2013---

The Little Crater

After a few days in Portland, where I finally got news from my friend who was desperately trying to cross the border, and who eventually got flagged for trying too much, and a visit of the Colombia River Recreational Area, I reached the feet of Mount-Hood. Covered in clouds, I couldn’t see it, but I knew about a small spring called Little Crater Lake. I don’t remember exactly how I got to discover the existence of that spring, since ever since I entered Oregon, no one seemed to know its existence, and even less its direction. Thankfully, I had taken care of the direction before I left for my trip. As I got just a kilometer from the intersection heading there, I stopped at the gas station, and even he didn’t know its existence.

Mt-Hood

Once I got to the intersection, I was left alone on a small road disappearing through the thin fog. I knew it was going to be hard to get a ride. To start with, no one knows its existence, there no traffic on the small road, and lastly, who picks up a guy hitching through the fog. But against all odds, a white pickup passed in front of me and disappeared behind the curve. It may not look like much luck, but he then turn and stopped by my side saying: “Sorry for passing by you without stopping, but it is kind of a creepy day to pick up strangers. Where are you heading?” After answering his question, he replied with, “Perfect, that where we are heading. You are lucky, because even the people riding this road don’t know it exists. Alright, hop in the back.” They seemed nice, but still didn’t fully trust a stranger walking alone in the fog, so I didn’t get the chance ride in the pickup, but only the back.

The cold moisture of the cloud we were driving through rapidly took over my body, as I shivered for the totality of the ride to the spring. Once there, I realised it had being very much worth it. The dark blue of the spring didn’t in any case prevent us from seeing with great precision 40 feet below the water surface. In that perfectly transparent water, a few trees had fallen but never decomposed cue to the lack of bacteria, and so you can very clearly see all the still intact trees lying in the depth of the sinkhole.

Little Crater Lake

Having had the time to talk with them at the spring, they realised I had no bad intention, and so invited me to tag along for the night as they had a small camping lot. Once there, they offered me to share their hotdogs, and a few beers. The evening kept on going, and eventually, as we started to talk about safety and guns, he told me he had a few guns with him and that if I wanted, I could take a few shots. Not saying no, we installed a target, and started shooting at it. It was a weird feeling; you are in the middle of a forest with perfect strangers, playing with guns, as you have no idea as to where you are or how to get out of here.

The next days, the sky had cleared, and I manage to see the impressive Mount-Hood, as I was heading down toward Redmond and start heading for the coast again. Eventually, we left the tree line behind and fell into sagebrush country. It was my first look at the great Far West; the main section of my trip. And, for the first time of my life, I felt a far from home. I had being to Egypt, Chile and Argentina back when I was younger, but having older people taking care of everything for you and the youth innocence, I didn’t got to realise how far from home I was. And when I say “felt far” I don’t mean the distance, but being in a place you are not familiar from, or a landscape you’ve never experienced. The air was dry and hot, not a tree to be seen, and in the far distance, Mount-Hood, of Jefferson would show their glaciers, contrasting the desert that is around you. And to make the experience even more incredible, the road got into a canyon with the typical mesas walls falling vertically until it would hit 45° slope of scrambled rock.

The Pleasure of Creating Contacts

Once at Redmond, I asked to be dropped at a local McDonald, for their Wi-Fi. I downloaded the path leading to my next destination, and started walking back to the entrance of town, where the road leading to the Pacific started. Despite being in town, I definitely felt like I was walking alone in the desert. The heat of the Sun was draining my energy, and since I had lost my cap in Seattle, I was feeling my brain starting to boil. Add to this the 60lbs strapped, as usual, to my back, and you can see how exhausted I was after half an hour walk.

Still looking for a place to raise my thumb, I got intercepted by one of many street lights. Mouth open, leaning forward in exhaustion, I heard people whistling, I raised my head, and saw a couple my age waving at me. I stopped waiting for my light, and just cut across. Stuart and Kayla were going to Eugene for some shopping, but not having much else to do, they decided to bring me all the way to Florence. They bought me a burger, and off we went, stopping at Eugene for their shopping, and by a few beers. We got to the coast quite late, the Sun was down, but we still got to the dunes, and made a small fire. Due to the fast flowing wind, the dunes kept on throwing its grain in our eyes and our beers, but we still had a great time.

While we were hanging out, I told them about my path, and when they realised I was passing by Bend, they jumped on the opportunity to tell me to call them once in town.

Finally, as our bottles were emptied, we decided to call it a night. For them, it was a long drive home, as for myself, I had it easy, try to find a place to through your tent in pitch dark without anyone knowing. I walked along the dark road, and eventually, decided to head in the forest. Using my hands as shield from branches, ì pierced through the first layer of the forest. From there, I manage to find a small flat spot covered in moss. It was perfect as I had a natural mattress to lie on. But not everything was good, as I had to go for a poo. The main problem wasn’t about the lack of toilets, but of toilet paper. I hadn’t brought any with me. But with my “great” survival knowledge, I got to try using the nearing moss. I got to say, it was actually pretty comfortable.

The next morning, I had my first long wait of the trip. I waited for two hours before I could find my next ride, but it was worth it. The girl who picked me up was going all the way to California, and didn’t have any time frame. She took the time to let me visit Oregon’s sand dunes, and Shore Acres before letting me off at Bandon Rock.

At the sand dunes, I got amazed by the lack of scale reference one can have. They were my first sand dunes, so as I wanted to have a picture of me walking the crest, I gave my camera to my driver, and started to run what I thought you take me just a few seconds. I ran, and ran, and ran, I wasn’t even getting close to halfway. Not wanting to waste too much time, I gave up; and just as I turned, I saw a tiny black dot in the lower part of the dune, it was my drive. Despite not looking that big, these dunes were huge, but had nothing to compare it from.

As you can see (once you spot me), the dunes are a lot bigger than you would imagine

We then got to Shore Acre. Now that was a weird looking area. The park is covered mostly by to different layers of rock; one yellow and another dark brown. Being easily erodible, the yellow layer would only be protected by the dark brown layer. On the other hand, not being extremely resistant to erosion itself, the dark brown layer would too be victimised by a different type of erosion. And so, it would get covered by hundreds of hole, or taffoni. Unfortunately for the park, despite being one of my favorite of Oregon, and definitely the oddest, it is far from being one of the know one.

Shore Acre

Finally at Bandon Rock, I took a quick look at the sea pillars, but the ever increasing fog prevented me from seeing anything. So, I decided to start heading toward Crater Lake National Park. To my amazement, despite the heavy millage, I managed to get to the park by dawn, with still enough sun light to take a quick look at Wizard Hat Island.

Wizard Island

Being located inside the crater of an ancient volcano, the lake is protected from any pollution, making it the clearest lake of the United-States. The blue of also the deepest lake of the States is absolutely unreal. It is said that when it was discovered, the guy was so impressed by the color of the lake that he painted the lake, but once in town, nobody believed the lake was as blue as the painting suggested. I started my day by getting away from the lake, to see the Pinnacles, a small part of the park, about nine miles outside the rim, and I got to say, the bouquet of pointy narrow towers of ancient volcano chimney is most certainly the best part of the lake. I then went around, and up to the small dock for a boat tour around the crater. As we were boating around, the guide gave us much information on the different features found around the lake. We saw some ancient lava flow, dykes left from fissure, Wizard Hat Island, Phantom Ship and Pumice Castle. Even though they were all great for pictures, the one that impressed me most was the one formation that answered to the first question that popped to my head when I saw the for the first time: How come the water doesn’t overflow? Indeed, with only a few feet depth variation, and no river flowing from it, the lake doesn’t seem to follow the laws of nature. It turns out that during one of the eruption of the volcano the lava flowed over a glacier, the cold of the glacier would solidify the lava to eventually create itself a protective roof. As the year passed by, the glacier slowly disappeared leaving only compacted rocks behind. Normally, these compacted rocks would have being washed away by rain fall, but because of its natural roof, it was protected. But being only compacted rock, the water can run through it, and so, when the water rises above a certain height, the water “disappears” through this normal looking wall, without leaving any visible clue of its escaping.

Crater Lake

After my much appreciated boat tour, I decided to go for a swim. But swimming was not what I truly had in mind. As I was waiting for the boat tour, one of the park rangers talked about a cliff we could dive from, and it was too hard for me to resist the temptation, I had to go jump from it. I got to the edge and looked down. It was about 25’ high, so needless to say, I stayed a few minutes on the edge looking down at the vertiginous cliff, but eventually, I overcame the stress took to step and jumped. I felt like I was falling for ever as I had never jumped a cliff that high. But once I finally reached the water, I just wanted to try it again, up until I grew the nerves to flip off of it.

The next morning, I got up and started hitchhiking toward Newberry Volcanic Park. I first got picked up by a park ranger telling me it was illegal to hitchhike in a park, but didn’t really cared, so simply dropped me at an intersection. From there, I waited much longer then I thought, but managed to get a ride bringing me all the way the Bend. And when I told my ride about Newberry, fascinated, by my description, he decided to do the detour with me to the park.

The first thing we did was to go for a walk through the obsidian rock flow. Then, we back tracked a little bit to climb a nearby mountain where a spectacular overlook was waiting for us. The sky was a perfect blue, the forest perfect green, only to be contrasted by the Twin Lake, reflecting the sky, and a huge dried lava flow looking like it was eating the forest. It most certainly was a unique sight to discover.

Newberry Lava Field

Not wanting to head back to the main road, we decided to follow the small dirt road. Unfortunately, we quickly lost track of where we were, and realised our map wasn’t up to date. That being said, when we stopped using our map and started using our common sense, we got back on the road; well, actually, we landed directly in Bend, so no need to drive on the road.

Once in Bend, I called Stuart who came to pick me up. We hung out for a while and got a few beers that we went drinking on top of a near hill. There was just one problem, neither had a place for me to sleep. They tried to figure something out for me, but realised there were no option, so Stuart told me to sneak in to his house as he was going to distract his parents. I have to mention that he was pitch drunk, and I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was doing, but at the same time, I needed a place for the night, and neither he nor Kayla was in a state to drive me out of town, so I played along. As he was getting yelled by his mom for being drunk, I entered by the back door, and followed his instruction to his room. And as planned, after a few minutes of yelling, he got to his room. Mission accomplished, no one knows I’m here, and the parents needed to wake up early, so morning won’t be a problem. I lay on the floor and Stuart got in his bed. He was sleeping naked, but with all the sheets, I didn’t mind. We both fell asleep with no delay. As I mentioned, he was a little too drunk, and so, in the middle of the night, he ran to the bathroom, fully naked to puke, but fell asleep with his head on the toilet seat. Later in the night, his mom went to the bathroom only to find her son in one of the most awkward situation I could imagine. She took him by the arm and brought him back, only to see a stranger sleeping on the ground. It must of being around 2am and the screams started again. The well awake mother, a perfect stranger how “broke into the house” and a naked son how could barely articulate any words. I explained everything to the mother in the most polite and well said way I could talk, and eventually got her to accept letting me sleep for the rest of the night.

The next morning, despite a horrible hangover, Stuart got up. I was already up for a while. He obviously didn’t want to stay home after what had happened, so I originally planned, we went to explore the near region. And when night fall started to show itself, I once more had to face the undeniable truth that I had no place to sleep, and no way I’m breaking into someone’s house again. Kayla, who came to meet us later in the day, knew about a camping on the perimeter of the town, but as we started driving farther and farther from town, we realised she didn’t know where it was. As for myself, I thought I had indirectly created too much trouble, and so, told them to pull over for me to camp in the wild. I thought the highway was heading along a forest, so I once out of the car, I started walking, but only for about two steps as a barbwire fence was blocking my way to the forest. I was now stuck in pitch darkness ten feet from the highway. I know it’s illegal to walk along the interstate, but is it illegal to camp? Of course not, so I decided not to put my tent up and grab anyone’s attention. I found a few trees to hid, and went to sleep. I couldn’t close my eyes though. The relentless vibration from the 18-wheelers passing by, synchronised with their extremely loud engine roaring and the headlights blinding me made it quite hard. Finally, when to coyote singalong began, I thought to myself, screw it, I’m camping; at least, the lights won’t be as bad, and I’ll feel much safer from the coyotes. Still not wanting to grab any attention, I put up my tent without using my headlamp, yet again. And finally fell asleep for the three hours I slept.

I would like to say the next day, but I’ll have to say; that day, I managed to go visit my last park of Oregon: John Day Fossil Bed, or the Painted Hills. Back in the desert, and this time for a few month, I got to see the yellow and red stripped dunes of the park, followed by the pink and white ones and finally some green dunes. What a sight!!

PHOTOS