Charis: As with Crater Lake, our first foray into Oregon and the Umpqua forest was muted, with the heavy fog and dense forest making everything a bit eerie. We made it to the little campsite we were staying in (in what felt like the middle of nowhere!) and settled in for the evening, with rain pattering on the roof of our RV and a loud chorus of frogs outside after dusk.

The Umpqua Hotsprings were the main draw to this area (Soak Oregon has further info here!) and we were up before 6am the next morning to drive about 20 minutes and climb up a steep muddy slope in the drizzle to find them. But we’re both very glad we did! The pools themselves were fabulous, with several pools cascading into each other down the hillside. The one at the top was very hot (think a bath where you get red temperature lines on your skin!) but they became slightly cooler as you went down, so you could pick the temperature you wanted. There was only one other gentleman there at first who was also enjoying the peace and quiet, with just the gurgling river below us and a few early birds.

Derek: The water flows up through the rocks and the pebble base of the pool shown above at a temperature of around 112 °F (44 °C) and about 20 liters per minute. Coming up through the rocks it dissolves calcium rich limestone and a lot of silica from the volcanic rocks, as the water cools down from pool to pool this silica and calcium come out of the water and form a smooth travertine stone lining in and around the pools. I found the geology and chemistry really interesting and now am thinking in the back of my mind about how you could make a hotspring in a backyard…

Charis: An hour and a half flew by, but as the pools began to get busier we decided to head back to our campsite, Umpqua’s Last Resort. It felt a little less spooky when the rain stopped, and we even started up the grill that evening to barbeque some veggies and vegan chicken pieces to make some very passable tacos!

The following day we decided to do a tour of several local, beautiful waterfalls including Watson Falls, Whitehorse Falls, and Clearwater Falls. Watson Falls in particular was very impressive, falling a total of 294 feet/89 meters!

Derek: Our final visit on the waterfall tour was Toketee Falls, near where the hotsprings were. ‘Toketee’ means ‘graceful’ or ‘pretty’ in Chinook, and the falls were just that, with multiple smaller drops before the thunderous fall at the bottom.

A redwood stave pipe built in 1949 moves water from Toketee Lake to a hydroelectric plant which powers 22,500 homes. It is 12 feet (4 meters) across and built using the same technique as the many water tower barrels we saw in Mendocino. The sprays of water from various leaks looks dramatic, but is a very tiny fraction of the water flowing through it.

Charis: After a further night in the little RV, we were initially planning to head north west to Eugene, but the fact that we hadn’t properly seen Crater Lake a few days ago was itching at us. We decided to turn back and try again – how often in your life are you only an hour and a half away from a ginormous caldera lake?

And this time, the weather played fair!

Crater Lake was absolutely stunning, and we’re very glad we went for a second shot. The story of how this lake came to be was very interesting and of course dramatic, as only volcanoes can be!

As we’d changed trajectory, we decided instead to continue down south. Next stop, Ashland!