Ever since we moved out here to Portland, Chris and Jeannie Stone have been telling us how amazing their 4th of July camping weekends are at the Stone Ranch in Northern Cali, between the towns of Genesee and Taylorsville. The land is known as high country, and it's a mix between the desert and the forest. There's mountains, creeks, lakes, waterfalls, wild animals, wildflowers, wild fires, ranch houses, cows, cowboys and a gold rush vibe to the whole area.
We left on our trip Saturday morning around 6 am and took the long way so that we could stop by Crater Lake, which we've heard so much about. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in America. It is a lake inside of a volcano with an awesome island in the middle known as Wizard Island. It has a 26 mile loop you can drive around at the top of the mountain, overlooking the lake. When we went, it was still quite snowy and you weren;'t allowed access to actually go in the lake, or I would've went swimming. It was gorgeous with butterflies and little gophers everywhere you turned.
the next four hours involved me speeding at 80 miles an hour, passing acre of acre of desert with pine trees and sage brush, ranch house, cows, horses, mountains, mountains and more mountains and then two super cool things: the best ice cream sandwich ever with peanut butter cookies in the town or Merril, Oregon and then a HUGE birdsnest which I was told was an osprey:
We arrived at Stone Ranch around 6:00 pm and set up our tent. Chris was the man as usual, lending us a spare tent, air mattress and sleeping bags. Spaghetti dinner that night and salad. margaritas. poppers (tequila shots w/ a splash of 7 up, banged on the table and then tossed down the hatch real quick).
Next day was the super-hyped up treasure hunt/scavenger hunt. we had the BEST time. we had about 5 teams of 5 or 6. each team was given a GPS. we had a big package of clues in envelopes w. longitude and latitudes printed on the front and hints...i.e., find the matchbox car at 3.995 latitude and 45.765 longitude. do the task at blah blah blah and take a pic of it. bring back a receipt from this place where it has this type of cash register, etc... AWESOME time! we came in second place...got back early but couldn't figure out two clues - one where it was a soduku puzzle on the front to find the latitude/longitude and then another where you had to solve a double equation with 2 variables! who remembers algebra?!??! we should've had a couple teenagers on our team like the others... I did have to swim across the creek though to find some m&ms on top of a huge rock..involved some decent mountain climbing skills...
best ribs ever that night.
monday was really decent as well...we made the acquaintance of these cool cats Craig and Jean from Santa Barbara, CA....we took some beers and went swimming at this place called Indian Falls...clear water, big ass cliffs, which I jumped off the 3rd level, around 35 feet, dope waterfalls, cool water, gorgeous views, etc... we also hit up this smalltown cowboy bar for some cans of budweiser... then found out what an indian taco is - an open face taco on indian fry bread, really good too...
later that night, INCREDIBLE prime rib on the bbq with this sick garlic herb rub. it was Chris Stone's 54th birthday. chocolate cake and HOMEMADE creme brule ice cream. YES, they sat there and churned the fucking ice cream. How sick is that??!?!?!
no way we were driving home that ngiht... next morning, drive home...left around 7 am...stopped 2 hours later for some eggs... stopped again around 5 more hours at Eugene, a hippytown an hour and a 1/2 south of portland...made it home around 5 pm or something...flexcar kicked ass this trip, didnt have to pay for gas, awesome reliable car...
in the end we had an awesome time and will be going every july 4th that we live on the west coast and probably even if we dont we'd come back for it anyway...thanks and keep in touch to all those we met, we had a blast...
