Labor Day-Road Tripp

Finally seem to have a solid internet connection.
Let's see, we've been to Mt Rainier, Crater Lake and now we are in Elko Nevada.
After our 2 days in Dupont, Kris picked up a pop out camper and we headed for Mt Rainier on Friday around noon. It was beautiful. As I have mentioned many times, we have had beautiful weather- blue skies, cool to warm temperatures like 60-80 degrees. The trip to Mt Rainier was no different.
When we first arrived, the peak was surrounded by clouds and you can't drive all the way up. In fact you can only drive about 5,000 feet up and the peak is over 14,000 feet. At one of the overlooks we noticed the clouds begin to break up so we stayed in that spot a while to see if it would clear, besides Laird was having a good time walking on the wall. It did clear and we got a good view of the top of the mountain. As we continued the drive back down the mountain, we say another promising overlook with lots of folks already there. By now the clouds had gone completely and we had a beautiful view of Rainier in one direction and Mt St Helen's in the other direction. We continued to stop at overlooks until we reached the bottom of the mountain. Instead of stying close by we decided to drive on towards Crater Lake (its a LONG drive!). We found a campground on Hwy. 12 at Mossyrock; Harmony Lake that had 2 side by side sites. Kris and Joe set up the pop up (not the best but at least they had their own space). We grilled some burgers and hit the sac.

We got an early start for the drive to Crater Lake but it still took all day. The campground we found was nice but wouldn't allow Kris to put up a tent so they had to endure the pop up one more night. Again we got side by side sites. We meet some nice folks from other areas who were there as well including a couple with a truck camper similar to ours except it was twice as big and had a slide out!

Early Sunday we headed up to the rim of Crater Lake. One of the most beautiful things we've seen this trip. Thus far everything has been impressive in part because of the great weather. Its hard to describe Crater Lake so I will post a picture.

We finished the rim tour about 2ish so went back to he campground. Rested a while, walked over to Diamond Lake and got a pizza and then Kris, Alex and Laird headed home with the "pipe dream" that Laird would sleep all the way. Ask her about that one.

This morning we pulled out of Diamond Lake RV PArk about 7:30 and headed for Nevada. This too was a long haul but again, the weather is as spectacular as the scenery. I had no idea there was so much big empty space. And with the sun glaring down all day, temperatures hit 90. We pulled into Elko NV about 5:30 and set up at the Iron Horse RV Campground. It has some connection to the Hilton Garden Inn.
Currently we are cooling in the camper, having a glass of Washington state wine and some smoked salmon.

Lets see if I can post pictures...