Keeping up with the Bragassas: And the road trip begins...

Days 1 & Day 2

Friday August 12 & Saturday August 13

Our road trip this year is going to be a little different that the road trip last year. Last year, we were on a tighter schedule to get from point A to point B. This year, we have a little bit of leeway as Brian is finally allowed to use some of his vacation days...so instead of booking it across the country and seeing the same things we did last year, we decided to make a 2 week vacation out of it...even if it does mean going a little bit out of our way. Our first stop on Friday night was about 2.5 hours north of where we lived in California to a place called Redding. It's near a big lake called Lake Shasta as well as a big mountain called...you guessed it...Mt. Shasta. We didn't really spend much time here except sleeping as we wanted to get back on the road and on our way to Portland.

While on our way to Portland, we decided to take a little detour to Crater Lake...a lake in the southern part of Oregon in Crater Lake National Park. The lake is the clearest lake in the United States...it's also one of the deepest, and in my opinion, prettiest. It's a lake that formed in the collapsed crater of a volcano and that is filled entirely by snowmelt. It has nothing feeding into it or leaving it, which means that the lake level only fluctuates about 5 feet a year due to evaporation and snow melt. We were in complete awe when we saw the lake and couldn't believe how blue it was! We just sat there and stared at it forever! Finally, we decided that we better get going so we could make it to Portland before it got completely dark.