Did you know fourth graders get into National Parks for free?
Sure, at half of them you still need to pay a reservation fee or whatever, but once you’re at the gate, you just point to a fourth-gradish looking child and tell them to shove their entry fee right up their ass.
Then apologize to said fourth grader for the profanity.
We discovered this last summer when Daughter was between third and fourth grade. I don’t think she technically should have qualified, because the pass we got expired August 30 of that year, meaning it was probably for kids who were finishing fourth grade, not going into it. But her school starts in mid-August, so if the federal government can’t figure out how to classify a fourth grader, who am I to tell them?
We got a new one for this year and have visited five. And since fifth graders don’t have government id’s, guess who’s going to be a fourth grader again?
“She’s a fourth grader.”
“She looks eighteen.”
“She’s really dumb and has been held back a lot.”
After a few days of treehousing and riverboating and… cat-seeing… we finally headed up into the mountains to accomplish our primary goal, which was visiting some national parks whild Daughter gets in for free.
First up was Crater Lake.
I’ve technically been to Crater Lake before, but not really. I headed up there on a weekend in early May once, not realizing that pretty much the entire mountain around the lake is still caked in twenty feet of snow in early May. Hell, even when we visited in late July, there were still substantial clumps of snow.
So on my first visit, they had only plowed the road up to the visitor center (because the beauty of national parks is second only to the commerce of national parks!), from which you could walk to one specific viewpoint on the south side of the lake. Because it was 90+ degrees in the valley, I took a picture of me wearing shorts and flip-flops in the snow, then promptly drove back down to Medford, thinking Crater Lake was almost as worthless of a National Park as Kings Canyon, in which there’s pretty much only one road in and, once you’ve made it to the end, all you can really do is get out of your car, say “Wow, look at that canyon,” then turn back around and leave the park.
Fortunately, this time around, a fair amount of the ring road was open. None of it had snow, but most of the east side was closed for construction or potholes or some of the usual road-closing reasons. I imagine if they’re only snow-free for four or five months a year, ya gotta get all your constructing done at that time. It seems like every time I visit Denver, the entire downtown is torn apart. Then again, I always visit in the summer.
So I can now confirm that Crater Lake has, not only a southern view, but also a western and a northern view. Whether or not there’s an east side of the lake is still a mystery.
You can also view the lake from, wait for it, lake level!
We weren’t sure if we were going to make it down to the lake. There’s only one path down, and it’s all the way on the north side of the lake. The hike is listed as “moderate to strenuous” and it’s the worst kind, where you’re going downhill first. Meaning the return trip was going to be uphill. Even though I’m now of an age where downhills are almost as bad as uphills, I friggin hate those kinds of hikes. For me, it’s rarely about the muscle fatigue, it’s usually the breathing. Downhills don’t task my lungs.
But Daughter wanted to ride that boat, and the boat was, shockingly, only available at lake level.
We had looked up tickets beforehand, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take us to get there from the treehouse. Good thing, because originally, I was debating between the noon and the 2:00 tours. But after we added in Daughter’s 8:00 am horseriding and stopped for lunch right before entering the park, we were barely at the south side of the lake by 2:00. Still a drive around the lake and a moderate to strenuous hike away from our destination.
There wasn’t a ton of cell service around the lake, so even if I had a good gauge on what time we might finally make it to the dock, I doubt I could’ve ordered tickets. So when we finally made it there, we had pretty much given up the fight. I tried to remind Daughter that I gave her the choice that morning of riding the horse or riding the boat, but that was little consolation.
But there were two more boat rides on the day, one at 3:30 and one at 3:45. The 3:30 one was full, plus it was already pushing 3:15 when we got there. The nimrods in front of us had tickets for it and the employee told them they better fucking run to the bottom of the trail if they were hoping to get on it. They left at a brisk walk, and she yelled, “Faster than that!”
I asked if they had any more tickets available for the 3:45 boat, but she wasn’t sure. The internet was shoddy or communication was down or something. The list, a few hours old, showed a few openings, but we would have to walk to the bottom of the trail to find out for sure. I was disinclined to haul ass to the bottom, only to find out it’s full and have to come right back up. But the employee said we should totally do it and told Daughter that she could swim in the lake if the boat was full, so off we went.
I’m not sure if we passed the nimrods on the 3:30 boat, but we passed a hell of a lot of people on the way down. I’m guessing they all had secure tickets. If there was going to be a waitlist, I wanted to make sure we were at the front of it. “Oh, Frank Jones isn’t here? Yeah, I passed that guy three-quarters of a mile ago. Trust me, he ain’t making it. Gimme his spot.”
When we made it to the bottom, turns out they didn’t know if the boat was full, either. They had the same shoddy internet and the same hours-old list.
Instead, we were told to just chill out and wait until the boat was finished loading. Then and only then would they know if the boat was full or not. If not, Daughter could swim for a bit while I got annoyed that we expended energy and muscles to get down here ASAP.
After five minutes or so, they let us on the boat. Magically, the credit card machine had absolutely no connectivity issues.
Since we boarded after all the ticketed passengers, the only spots left appeared to be the jump seat in the back pf the boat. It was a weird setup – whereas all the other seats were on the left or right, with an aisle down the middle, ours was in the middle, right in front of the pilot’s dais. Daughter thought it was VIP, but all I could think was that we’d get the least amount of wind. Plus, in our haste, we hadn’t added any sunscreen and my knees were going to absolutely fry.
Fortunately for us, we had to give up the seats to a couple I’ll graciously call “The Doomed.” Because vulture candy is offensive.
The Doomed were a married couple who I will generously call “unprepared.” They appeared to be about ten years older than me and less than half as healthy. Bear in mind, I ain’t exactly Dwayne Johnson. More like Boris Johnson. Like I said, I thought long and hard about a moderate to strenuous hike at elevation. Clearly the Doomed didn’t.
In another ten years, when I’m (possibly) as old as The Doomed, I assume I’ll be even less inclined to believe I can make the circuit. Especially if, like these two, I don’t make these sojourns all that frequently. So if I was questioning whether or not I ought to be making this hike, then these two should’ve answered the query with a hard fucking no from the first inkling.
I don’t know what ship The Doomed were supposed to be on. I doubt it was ours. When they first appeared on the dock, we were already supposed to have left five minutes earlier, but because of people like me and a handful of others buying up the empty seats, we were still within shouting distance.
Doomed Dude’s shin had a ginormous gash on it. It was mostly scabbed over, but there was still a rivulet of fresh blood. So I’m guessing they had taken maybe an hour or more to hike down the path I’d done in less than twenty minutes. I assume he fell, they’d paused for long enough to it to coagulate a bit, then it had reopened when they started walking again. He also had dust and debris up and down his legs and his hair looked like the guy in Airplane! after he stops giving up sniffing glue.
As for the woman, I don’t think she was injured before approaching the boat. She seemed wobbly, but that might have initially been more a result of exhaustion than injury.
But not for long.
I don’t know where she was trying to go. There was a flat platform secured against the granite, then a long metal ramp descending down to the floating platform that the boat is attached to. On that flat platform are a few containers, kinda like giant ice chests, containing life jackets, making the platform a little crowded. When there were fifty of us heading toward the boat around the same time, some of us stepped off the flat platform, scrambling on the rocks to circumvent the congestion. I doubt that was her goal, since there were only a few employees on the platform at that time, most of them assisting her husband.
Regardless of her intent, she slipped on either a rock or dirt. With the entire boat staring at her and waiting, her upper torso seemed to lean one way while her lower torso went the opposite. Then her ankle rolled and down she went like the goddamned Titanic, rolling off the platform.
Well, shit, now the boat’s gonna be even further delayed.
Somehow all the kings horses and all the kings men were able to load them onto the boat. They asked me and Daughter to give up our jump seat, which was perfectly fine with me, and even better, somebody else moved so we could sit together. The Doomed got a couple of free waters that we had to pay exorbitant prices for.
Hilariously, when the boat finally started, the guide asked how hard we thought that hike down was on a scale of one to five. The woman put up all five fingers, but the dude, looking like something out of ground zero on 9/11, only put up two fingers.
Originally, I thought maybe The Doomed were going to be dropped off at the south end of the lake. There’s no pedestrian path over there (the spot we were at is the only public access spot), but I figured maybe there might be a way for official people to get where they needed to be. Maybe a helicopter pad or something.
But nope, they stayed on the boat for the whole two-hour tour.
The tour itself was kinda meh. Considering our last boat, less than 24 hours earlier, included multi-boat twirlies and free beer, it was always gonna be an uphill battle. I mean, what does stupid Career Lake have to offer? Unparalleled beauty of a natural masterpiece? The clearest blue water you’ll find anywhere? Big whoop! Not once did we catch air from another boat’s wake!
The tour guide left a bit to be desired. Not sure if he was running a tour for the first time or if the distracted, nervous demeanor was just his personality, but he left something to be desired in the excitement department.
He used a lot of “some people see this in the rocks, but I don’t see it.” Part of me thinks it was a shtick to get us to “find” it, but he didn’t fill me with confidence when he said that the volcanic eruption that created the Crater could be seen as far as Montana. “And even… British… Columbia? Is that right? Is that the one that’s in Canada?”
Evidently geology and geography are different practices. And we’ll ignore the fact that British Columbia is probably the same distance from southeastern Oregon as Montana is, so that revelation didn’t add anything to the wow factor. Sure, BC is in a different country, but I don’t think a volcano that blew 6,000 years ago was carrying a passport.
His knowledge of rocks was great, though. He explained how various rock structures were originally fissures inside the ginormous volcano that once stretched across the entirety of the lake. He knew so much about rocks that, when the tour ended, the captain said, “Are you going to talk about rocks some more? Let me run the tour. There’s a great fishing spot over there.”
Then again, his message clearly wasn’t getting through to everyone, since I heard another passenger confidently tell his family “It was a glacier that did it.” Dude, you’re thinking of Yosemite. How many friggin times have you heard volcano today, dumbass?
The best part of the tour was when we filled our water bottles. It’s, allegedly, the ninth cleanest lake in the world. “Allegedly” because the tour guide couldn’t tell us any of the other eight. They were probably in British Columbia.
Regardless of its place on the list, we were on the opposite end from the access point with all those peeing swimmers, so the water should’ve been totally safe to drink. At least before we stopped the boat and leaned over to submerge the bottles we’d just been putting in our mouths. So maybe now Crater Lake is the tenth cleanest in the world. Eleventh if The Doomed got his bloody gash near it.
Speaking of The Doomed, when we all piled out at the end of the trip, they were asked if they thought they could get back up under their own power. I think the answer might’ve been no even if they hadn’t both taken tumbles on the way down. Maybe the falls were all intended to get a free medical evacuation.
So as the rest of us worked our way back up the moderate to strenuous path (which felt much more on the strenuous side this time), we were passed by a number of EMT and paramedic types, one of which had a pretty cool looking gurney unicycle thing. Guessing the standard four-wheeled contraption can’t go up a rocky path of switchbacks. Of course, that meant she’d need at least two, maybe three or four, people to hold it steady as they pushed her back up the hill.
I would’ve paid money to see her rolling off it repeatedly. Especially after the East German judge only scored her first loop-de-loop a seven.
We never saw them come back up. Not because we were tearing the uphill. It was just as painstaking as I expected.
We were some of the last people going up, especially after a pit-stop at the restrooms and Daughter getting a brief swim in the lake. All the employees left around the same time we did. Our tour guide was jogging the whole way. Whatever, dude. Talk to me when you’re fifty. And know where Canada is.
My legs were fine, but my breathing and heartrate weren’t having it. Especially since my dumb ass decided to push it for the first quarter mile. And that water from the lake was now an hour old and not quite as crisp anymore.
We kept leapfrogging the captain. While we were resting, he would move ahead. Then he would rest and we would pass him. We always exchanged pleasantries. He convinced me there was no shame in going slow, even if I’ve got a ten-year old with me that could’ve probably ran the whole damn thing with the tour guide.
He might’ve been of a similar age to The Doomed, but was in substantially better health, which, again, makes me wonder if they had a shot in hell of hiking uphill, regardless of injury. After all, this uphill hike was the captain’s everyday commute. He knew which trees and rocks were best for leaning against, just like I knew which lanes have potholes. Can’t tell whose commute is more excruciating. Mine is mind-numbing, his is leg-numbing. His has a much better view than mine, no matter how creative those personalized plate are.
Eventually, we made it. Probably took about twice as long going up as down. And then, exhausted and out of breath, all I had to do was drive back to a hotel we’d booked in Weed, California. Which was still a good three hours away and, despite getting good online reviews, had soap but no shampoo in the shower and an air conditioner that I had to stand on a chair to plug in and wait another twenty minutes for it to cool down the room.
But, when given a chance, you’ve always gotta stop in Weed, amirite?
The Writing Wombat 
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