What an exciting week we’ve had, hosting our friends Michel & Raymonde from Geneva, Switzerland! They arrived on Sunday, Sept. 16, driving north from Crater Lake in their rental motorhome. They have been traveling around the west for a month already, having flown into Las Vegas to pick up the RV and continued through California visiting every National and State Park they came across! Their enthusiasm for camping, hiking and enjoying the outdoors is contagious!

Michel & Raymonde in Yosemite.

We took a hike today into the mountains. The clouds looked a little threatening, and the smokey haze lay in the valleys to the west. We headed up a trail alongside a canal that took us towards the basin of Brokentop. The canal was dry, but it must be a torrent in the spring.

The path took a turn and we struck out cross-country to get closer to the basin.

We reached a turn-around point and stopped for lunch along a creek. The glacier is still melting, the stream carving a narrow canyon through the pumice and other volcanic rock.

As we hiked back down to the truck we had a great view of Mount Bachelor. Since we had an early start, we were back home by 1 pm, with over 5 miles of mountain hiking to remember.

Happy Birthday to Sailor Tom!

We took a nice drive on Quartzville Road through the Cascades today, from Marion Forks to Sweet Home. The sun was shining and the berries were ripe along the scenic route. We were detoured onto a gravel road that took us high into the mountains where we had views of Mount Jefferson and Mount Hood from new perspectives. We returned to the Quartzville Creek canyon when we descended from the heights and had great viewpoints of waterfalls, green tinted pools and whitewater. The ghost town of Quartzville is somewhere along the route, perhaps the area we were detoured around. The creek must become a torrent during part of the year, or has in the past, evidenced by this washed out bridge. Our sightseeing was curtailed somewhat by a boiling battery. It’s a good thing the diesel truck has two batteries, so we could unhook the bad battery and continue on our tour without shutting the truck off!

We had a great picnic at Prineville Resevoir with our friends Mark, Sue, Alastair and Melody. Special thanks to Alastair for the great pictures! Blue skies and warm sunshine invited us onto the water thanks to Mark & Sue and their speedboat. At first I was a little reluctant but after seeing Mark wakeboard, the teenager took over in me and I gave it a try.

It doesn’t take long for gravity to take over!