Crescent City, California

We're finally in California! Before we left Bend, Oregon, we spotted a great fruit stand to stop at. We perused the selection, and finally settled on a couple peaches, nectarines, and a pint of raspberries. Even though the stand accepted credit cards, we wish we had had cash on us. When I handed my card to the gentleman, he informed me that his wife had the card scanner, so we would have to wait a few minutes for her. That was no big deal to us, because it gave us time to search for more snacks among the produce. While we waited, the owner of the fruit stand made polite chit-chat with us - asking where we were from and what we were doing in the area and whatnot. However, things took an awkward turn once the question was popped, "So are you guys Christian?" Stunned, I quickly said, "Uhhh, no." Luckily there was no wrong answer. Finally his wife showed up, we payed, and were on our way. Leaving Bend, we took a big detour to check out Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon. It essentially is a large, clear mountain lake, and happens to be the deepest lake in the United States. It took us longer to get there than we expected because the north entrance was closed because of snow. We drove an extra 40 or 50 miles or so and reached the west entrance, which was luckily open. Once on the rim drive, there were some great views, and we saw some gray jays, clark's nutcrackers, and a couple really cool steller's jays. Unfortunately only about a mile of the rim drive had been cleared of snow. It was still worth the detour though because we took a real scenic route from there to Crescent City, California, which is where we are now. We drove through winding mountain roads, and saw our first glimpse of redwoods. I have already seen some of the biggest trees in my life, and we haven't even hit the National Park. Once we got here to Crescent City I dipped my toes in the Pacific, and we found a motel room that didn't look like it would give us an STD. Crescent City is a little more run-down than we had expected. No worries though, because now we're close to our redwoods backpacking excursion! We won't be able to blog for a few days because we will be camping for a while. We'll be in San Francisco on Monday, so we'll blog again then. Laura is about to put a bunch of new pictures up on facebook, so check them out!

Elijah