The Adventures of Annie and Mitch: Rainy Days

Oregon is beautiful- lush and green, with rivers and lakes all over the place. That means it rains. For more than an hour at a time. And rain it has, since we arrived. It’s stopped a bit on and off, but it’s been a pretty classic rainy day for 2 days.

The primary purpose for this trip is our stop in Oregon for a Paragliding event called the Rat Race. Paragliders come from all over the country to converge on Jacksonville, OR for a week. Mitch is one of them. We came up last year, but I dropped him off and went to Portland and Seattle without him. This year I decided to stay for the week and we’ll goto Portland and Seattle together.

Rain is not paragliding weather, so Mitch was grounded. Luckily we can think on our feet and came up with some alternate plans because sitting in a two person tent in the rain gets old after about 10 minutes. Crater Lake National Park is just 100 miles or so from where we are camping. We have a National Parks pass, so it seemed like a no brainer. I did some research and found that while some of the roads are closed until July, most of them are open and June is considered a pretty good time to see the lake with low risk of fog covering it.

We threw on a podcast (currently listening to the tale of Bowe Bergdahl viz Serial season 2) and away we went. The drive was lovely, twisting and turning through the forest. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, there was snow on the trees. Giant pines covered in snow. And there was snow on the ground, and not just little bits in the shady areas like I’m accustomed to seeing- it was several inches of snow covering the ground everywhere. We kept driving and flashed our pass to get through the gate (which felt pretty VIP, if we’re honest), and arrived at the visitor center. We consulted the map and set off to see the lake. About a 2 minute walk later and there it was!

Crater Lake is majestic to say the least. it was formed 7700 years ago after a large eruption and subsequent collapse of a volcano. The lake is filled with rain and snow melt, it has no tributaries and doesn’t feed anywhere else. It is truly a completely self contained body of water. The deepest freshwater lake in North America at that. There are fish in the lake, but they were introduced by man- no native fish exist.

We marveled at the true blue water that was so calm and serene. Sitting in the bottom of the caldera it is unbothered by wind and truly the most pristine water I’ve ever seen. On the best of days the visibility is well over 100 feet deep- not like most lakes I’ve been in where you’re lucky if you can see your feet on the bottom.

And it snowed! Actual, falling snow. In June. Less than a week before the summer solstice, we stood in snow. We sought refuge in the lodge as it started to snow harder and waited it out with a hot chocolate. In June! The temperature difference between Crater Lake and Tucson was about 80 degrees. Did I mention snow? In June? What a fascinating country we live in.

The rain continued as we left the lake and headed back to the campsite, with short breaks that allowed us to do a couple of things before needing to hide again. It rained all night and was still going when we woke up. The plan was paragliding, the rain again delayed it.

So we went for rainy day option 2: The House of Mystery at the Oregon Vortex. We saw a brochure for it at Crater Lake, and last year we went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, so figured- lets check out another one.

The premise behind the Mystery House is that it is located inside a Vortex just under 1 acre in area. Mitch, always looking for a chance to haggle, asked for a teacher discount on our admission. The guy working the window seemed pretty amused and knocked a dollar off (which we left as a tip for our tour guide). The operation is pretty low key- a tiny gift shop and office, a small, very crooked house, a board full of photos and articles dating back to the early 1900s, and a few port-a-potties. And no cell phone service.

The tour consisted of a history and several “demonstrations” of the weird things the vortex causes- namely a change in your apparent mass. This was done by having people stand several feet apart on level platforms. A level was presented to show the platform was indeed level. The people’s heights were observed and everyone agreed on who was taller- not a difficult task when the the people called up were typically 5-6 inches apart in height. They then traded places and their heights were again observed. One person would appear significantly taller while the other appeared significantly shorter. This was done in several spots using a few props to drove home the point and show that there weren’t optical illusions at play due to angles or cleverly constructed rooms.

All in all it was a really interesting place. I felt a little dizzy at times as we stood around, especially where they explained was very near the center, but I don’t know if that was due to the Vortex or sheer exhaustion.

My back and leg continue to hurt and getting out of a small tent is already challenging, add in rain and it brings it to a whole new level of obstacle course. The initial getting up is accompanied by a cacophony of sound effects, moans, and cursing. Plus this morning we were awoken by loud “woos” and other shouts at about 6:30. Our campground was the starting point for a relay full of overly excited and very shouty runners who clearly like to torture themselves and others by running in the rain at 7am. I’ll take the Vortex over that any day.