In the middle of Oregon is Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lke was formed at the top of a Volcano! We were stopped at the entry way for quite a while. I don't know if they're not very well organized or just had that many people coming for the holiday weekend. Here Dennis and Charity are in front of an overlook of the lake. It was huge and very cool looking! And look, snow in July! Poor Danielle was asleep in the van and I didn't want to wake her so she didn't get to see the Lake. It was surprisingly NOT that cold for having that much snow on the ground, but it wasn't that warm either. We were all wanting jackets on by the time we got back in the vehicles. And all our poor kids were dressed in shorts that day! Oh, and just a note do NOT open your windows while waiting to get into the park, they have some giant mosquitos!
We went and stopped at the Visitor's Center too looking for a good place to have lunch but it was PACKED. So we ended up not staying there long. There was this gorgeous necklace in the gift shop that I'm still wishing I'd gotten though. It didn't seem like we were at Crater Lake that long but after the overlook and the Visitor's Center we must have been there for a couple of hours. Most of the rest of the day was spent driving.
For dinner we stopped at a Mexican restaraunt somewhere along the way. It had pretty good food and the kids loved it cuz the kid's meals all came with ice cream! They were quite a handful after being cooped up in the van for 2 days though! I must admit, the drive through the middle of Oregon does have a lot of very pretty views! Mom though we might make it to the coast in time for sunset but alas, we just missed it :( So Dennis' first view was after dusk and not that impressive since he couldn't really see it :( I'm not sure he was ever that impressed with a view of the ocean though. Poor guy, he did get a lot of great pictures of the kids at the beach later on though!
So, Mom and Dad with Steve and May stopped in Brookings at the store and Dennis and I along with Laura and Kevin were the first ones to the Beachhouse. It was fun getting to explore the house and seeing if our sleeping arrangement plans still worked out well. On the main floor was a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a sitting room, and 2 bedrooms with King Size beds. Downstairs was 2 bedrooms with queen size beds, a "kids area" with 2 bunk beds a futon and a tv, the laundry room, a bathroom, a master bedroom and a master bath. Well, since we had 8 adults and 9 kids it was a lot of fun trying to figure out where everyone would sleep! And I'm so glad we came up with a plan before we got there because it was late again and we were all tired and ready to go to sleep! Oh, Steve and May got one of the rooms downstairs, as did Laura and Kevin and then their kids shared the kids area. Then Dennis and I got the master bedroom and we'd taken an air mattress for Charity and Danielle to sleep on. Mom and Dad had a room upstairs so Mom wouldn't have to be doing stairs a lot and then Michael and Gabriel shared the other room upstairs. Downstairs we all had a door that led directly outside to the back, where the driveway actually continued down so we were able to park not far from our doors.
I must admit with Dennis and I being private people we were a little disappointed that our door didn't have blinds or anything in front of it and one of the windows didn't either. Overall, there were definitely a few things the house could have improved upon in that area. The closet for the master bedroom had been turned into a little sitting area and there was one of those room screens in there against a wall so we used that at night in front of the sliding glass door to help block out the light and get a little more privacy and such. However, the tub in the bathroom was so big that Dennis could even fit into it, so that was nice. lol.
We wanted to check out the hot tub and the beach but it was too dark at this point! So that had to wait until the next day.
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