Day 55, Tuesday, August 9

Day spent in Crater Lake. Met Karen Torgussen. My plan today was to ride around the lake some more, take some pictures and maybe take a hike. Implicit in those plans was the overwhelming hope that today’s mix of people would be better than yesterday’s. Thankfully my hopes were fulfilled. The first thing I did today was to head to the South East side off the lake to see a rock formation called the Ghost Ship. While I was sitting there in the parking lot a gal rolled up on her bicycle and I of course started up a conversation about why I’d seen so incredibly many bicyclists around the lake. (Anything for a conversation, right?) Turns out that she, Karen Torgerson from San Diego, is yet another person doing a similar trip to mine. Karen was a software engineer and decided that she’d had enough of that. So she volunteered with this group called Cycle America. www.cycleamerica.com to see the states from a bicycle. Karen is one of these rare people who claims to be GUNG HO about just any outdoor sport and BACKS IT UP! She’s an avid mountain biker, has run marathons, and has even done the ironman. Statistics say something like one percent of the population has done a marathon and then only one percent of them has done a triathlon. After talking with Karen for probably half an hour we headed our separate ways but she invited me to join her and the cycleamerica group for dinner. Seeing as I was planning on doing a gourmet dinner of Top Ramen noodles (I was about out of groceries) ANYTHING was going to be better than what I had planned.
One of the things I found most interesting about Crater Lake was the forms called the Pinnacles. When gasses emerge from a volcanic steam vent, the formation is called a fumerole. As the gasses pass through the ground, the super heated chemicals in the gasses serve to cement and weld the granules of the surrounding rock together. These bonded rock structures are generally conical in shape with the narrow end towards the top. When the ground surrounding a fumerole gets eroded away (in this case by a creek) the fumerole is left intact since it is so much harder and durable than the surrounding rock. The Pinnacles is an area which had many fumeroles which were eroded by a river. The effect is stunning.
After riding around (and going to get some gas and groceries) I headed over to meet Karen at the CycleAmerica campground, but first went by my campsite to dump my groceries. THANKFULLY I found that I had new neighbors and went over to introduce myself. Par for the course they were really interested about my trip, but their ears really perked up when I mentioned that Jeanette and I had spent a weekend in California wine country. When I told them Jeanette and I had gone by Berringer Estates, the Husband got really interested and asked how our experience was there. I of course told him all about how negatively impressed we’d been by how we were treated and especially in comparison to how we were treated like royalty at Korbel and how Jeanette and I had both concurred that neither of us would ever to go Berringer again. His reaction? Classic! Turns out he’d worked pretty high in the marketing department at Korbel for 8 years and that he was now quite high up in the marketing department for Berringer. In his words “People are going to hear about this…” How incredibly ironic! Then again, on this trip, I’m finding that NOTHING is too far fetched to believe!
After talking to my new neighbors for a while, I headed over to the CampAmerica sight where I was expecting typical camp food when I showed up. You know…Baked beans, wieners, etc. Boy was I wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When I got there, they had a TWO plates laid out for me…baked salmon, shrimp jambalaya, couscous, mixed greens salad with vinaigrette dressing, cole slaw, guacamole, bagel chips, and lemonade. All in HEAPING helpings! I was in heaven. After dinner Karen and I headed for a late night motorcycle ride around the lake. All in all a fantastic day!