Greetings from Oregon

I've been in Oregon for almost a week now with the family, and I've got to say, I love it here! I've been bikeless the whole time, but it hasn't been too bad because I've been getting in a lot of workouts doing day hikes.

The first place we took in was Crater Lake. Despite hearing the accounts of many who have been there, I couldn't believe how pristine and blue the lake truly is.

We attempted to hike up Watchman Peak to get a better view, but it was still rather snowy:

We weren't expecting the trail to have over 6 feet of snow in mid-July, and nobody on the trip was prepared to hike in it so we turned back at that point (since slipping on the snow would mean sliding down the slope into a bunch of unfriendly-looking rocks).

We were able to hike down to the surface of the lake, which was just as blue up close. The hike back up was intense though—over 700 feet of gain in just about a mile.

We spent some time traveling to see the redwoods in California and a kind ranger told us about a little-known trail that wound around the hills south of Crescent City and took you down along the coast in the Redwood National Park. It was pretty isolated and the views were incredible. I've got to admit, I'm falling in love with the mountains here.

One thing, however, did put a bit of a damper on my enjoyment of the outdoors, and that was people breaking rules. Not everyone abides by the Leave No Trace philosophy of "Take only pictures, leave only footprints," but I saw several people blatantly breaking the rules at national parks. People were feeding squirrels and chipmunks at Crater Lake...while I'll admit it's not as dangerous as feeding a bear, it's still bad to do. When squirrels start relying on handouts from people, they don't bury as many seeds and less new pine trees germinate. Even squirrels have important roles!

Feeding squirrels scraps of bread paled in comparison to people taking out large pieces of driftwood from the coast south of Crescent Beach. On the way down, I passed a group of people carrying out four large pieces of driftwood (ranging from two to four feet wide) and a piece of what looked like coral back to their car. Seeing that was infuriating, and it was very hard to bite my tongue and not inform them that they were breaking federal law by removing those from the park...but getting in the middle of an argument about it while being outnumbered didn't seem like a smart idea. It made me even more mad when I got down to the beach, and saw that there was really very little driftwood down there—it would've been appreciated if those folks had left it for others to see.