National Park Navigating: Crater Lake and Yosemite!

I'd been to America a total of 9 times before our epic road trip...and none of those times had revolved around nature.  Mostly those trips revolved around shopping, root beer, milkshakes, baked goods etc...! but this road trip was co-planned with my forester husband and so it was slightly different! and all the more better for it! Yes, I still ate a large amount of cupcakes and drank milkshakes as often as possible...but in between those treats in the cities, we stopped at some amazing national parks and saw some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen! 

That's our little rental car right there...doing us proud!

America has 59 National Parks, according to Wikipedia...We managed to fit 4 in on our road trip so we still have some massive catching up to do!

 I knew that we couldn't leave Oregon without checking out Crater Lake though.  A few years ago, I saw some American lady's blog and she had pictures of the most amazing turquoise blue lake I had ever seen...I googled it and discovered it was Crater Lake, I'd never even heard of it before! but I knew one day I would like to visit!

Unfortunately, on the day we did arrive at Crater Lake...I mostly looked like this and spent most of the day in the car because I had woken up that day with an extreme case of morning sickenss! which really turned into all day sickness!

So I admired those turquoise blue waters from the car window mostly! Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the whole of America, and is a caldera that was left when a volcano, Mount Mazama, erupted 7,700 years ago.

I managed to make it out the car for this pic! Such amazing views!

We hiked a little way up the outside, to catch this awesome sunset!

Soo pretty!

 

The water was so calm and still! Earlier while I had napped in the car, By had hiked down to the water, a hike that unfortunately was not suitable for pregnant women! and he'd even bravely dived into the water.  Although it was a scorching hot sunny day, the water in the lake is glacial and so was icy cold!!

Fortunately by this time I was feeling better and so I was able to enjoy some of the sights a little more! 

 and lastly check out all the stars we saw!! It was amazing! I love being so far away from everything like that!

 Our next National Park pit stop was the mighty Yosemite in California! We had woken up before 5am to get on the road to make it there, it was one of our longest stretches of driving thus far on our trip!

So we were very happy when we came across this sign!

 

I was less than happy as we drove through the park and I was greeted with all this rock?!

 Yes, it was impressive scenery but not what I was expecting!

 

and that's when we discovered I had mixed up Yosemite with Yellowstone! I was expecting Yellowstone which is a much more beautiful, scenic looking national park.  So in the picture above Byron calls it my 'brat' face...because I was sulking at all the rock!

I did try to get over it, and enjoy everything Yosemite had on offer though! (but one day in the future I must make it to Yellowstone!)

 By braved the chilly waters again, and I stayed on the sidelines being photographer and playing my pregnant card!

Yosemite Falls, above, is the highest waterfall in North America! That did delight me...being the waterfall lover I am, it was not at it's fastest flowing at this time of year though but it was impressive nonetheless!

Byron was just in his element everywhere we went, he couldn't get enough of the place! and would have probably liked to stay for a week! We certainly didn't even scratch the surface of the park - it is SOO huge!

 

 Our campsite was called Tuolumne Meadows and opposite this beautiful Meadow! We captured this shot just as the light was closing in on the day.  It was probably the coldest night sleep we had on the trip because the altitude of the campsite was so high!

but we decided to go stargazing, and climbed that big huge rock in the dark (the one I'd made my brat face on earlier in the day) and we took sleeping bags with us and lay out catching a few shooting stars for a while, and then we realised we could see the Milky Way! How unbelievably cool is that! It was probably one of our best nights on the trip! and it turns out Yosemite wasn't so bad after all!!

Next up awesome amounts of treats in San Fran!

Oregon Loving

 

So we arrived into Portland, the evening of the 3rd July, we had just enough time to zip into town..grab some dinner, at this very old famous restaurant. They are renowned for having turkey dinners all year round and anyone who knows me will know how much I love a roast so I had to give it a try! Plus it made a nice change to all the camp food/fast food we'd been eating! and we also made it to Voodoo Doughnuts which I was mega excited about! 

There was a very long line, but it was worth it. Check out the doughnuts we got! The peanut butter and Oreo was my fave!

 

The next morning we drove out to Multnomah Falls, with my love of waterfalls I was suuuuper excited about coming here!

 

 I had seen it on pinterest a few years back and when I realised we could make it co-incide with our road trip I was set on making it happen! It did not disappoint! It's the 2nd tallest Waterfall in America, and was quite a sight to behold! and a great way to start off our first ever 4th July in America! (note the patriotism of my tee!) 

We started climbing to the top, but Byron had to leave the tired pregnant woman half way up as I was struggling with the steep incline! so he snapped this pic right at the top! It was a beautiful setting.

After seeing the falls, we headed into downtown Portland. Actually, a lot was closed because it was a national holiday which I was a bit surprised about. On public holidays in England, cities are always booming with people shopping around and eating but Portland was seriously dead! Sadly the awesome cable car we wanted to take across the city was closed :( but we headed to one of the food truck pods the city has to check out what was on offer... 

 

I opted for a gourmet grilled cheese stuffed with Avo - it was delish!

Whilst Byron went for some pulled pork action.. 

and no day of fun is complete without a stop at a cupcakery! I've been following this one for a while now, I was initially drawn to it because of the name! but then because of it's awesome flavours too, and the fact all it's cupcakes are filled. I LOVE filled cupcakes! 

Their selection was impressive, and it was seriously hard to pick! If we didn't still have voodoo doughnuts left over from the night before, I would have picked a whole box! but of course I had to go for the triple coconut cream flavour!

It was one of the biggest cupcakes I've ever eaten! and most delicious..it was a seriously good pit stop! 

 

By the time evening rolled around, we were feeling the need to be somewhat healthy after the few days of sugar gorging we'd partaken in! So I had to throw out our original dinner plans and we researched somewhere selling organic local produce and came across the Huckleberry Pub! It also helped that it looked so super cute, and was decked out in all it's festivity for Independence Day!

It was a lovely evening out so we sat on the deck, Byron went for hand rolled pasta with bolognese, 3 cheeses and roasted eggplant...

and I had the most delicious duck risotto! It was certainly one of the most nutritious meals we'd had in a while! 

After dinner, we headed down to the Waterfront to catch the fireworks!

 I had even brought my American flag with me, but apparently Portlandians were not all decked out in red, white and blue as I had hoped! I appeared to be the most patriotic person there! and I wasn't even a native! 

It was certainly an impressive display over the water though! and I felt very happy to finally be celebrating an Independence Day in the country I love so much! 

The big dazzly ones are my fave! 

It finished on a bang with plenty of red, white and blue fireworks to remind us all of the day we were celebrating! 

 

The next morning we had an early start, back on the Highway, and back to being surrounded by trees. Oregon is such a green state! We loved it! 

After a few hours drive, we arrived at Cannon Beach. It was the cutest little town that time forgot! We even saw these old fashioned cars driving through.. 

They still had their Americana decorations up... 

and we were especially loving this Tsunami evacuation route sign!! Scary stuff!

 

This little 'candy store' was the cutest place ever! They had taffy in the most amazing flavours! 

We headed down to the beach, it was pretty overcast sadly. For our first beach day of our trip we were hoping for a hot sunny day! 

Fortunately the clouds did clear up after a while and we managed some blue sky, but it still wasn't really warm enough for a dip or for sunbathing! So we posed by Haystack Rock.. 

 This was my 'wow the water is cold' face! after some trickled over my feet during the pic!

You have no idea how long it took us to get this picture! We asked a few different people, but they kept cutting our feet out...and By the photographer feels very strongly about framing a whole person when taking a picture so finally the last lady we asked came through and took this snap for us!!

We kept heading down the coast for more amazing views like the one below...

on the good old highway 101!

After a lot of hours driving, we finally came to our campsite around dinner time! We discovered there were some sand dunes right behind where we pitched our tent so we went to check them out! 

 

How crazy is that! They were actually pretty massive! 

It was rather windy though!  so By's idea for a nice romantic sit down on our blanket as we watched the sunset didn't really work out...since sand kept getting whipped in our faces!!

 

So, we sneaked this glimpse of the beautiful skyline! and then headed back to camp...ready for a very early morning start to Crater Lake!