Wow. We had a full day of adventures today despite the fact that we drove for many, many hours. First we noticed a river at a rest stop by the side of the road, so we got out and checked it out. There were giant, nasty bugs all around us (and occasionally under our feet) that we learned were salmon flies.

From there, we went up down the road and visited a fish hatchery, and found another stranger who approached us started a conversation (we've found that oregon folk are extremely friendly and nice).

While we were at the hatchery, we found a little dog walking by itself up a flight of stairs. It was pretty shy, but not aggressive, so we picked it up and looked for a way to return it to its owner. It had a collar, but the person at the number printed on the collar didn't pick up. We finally handed the dog over to a park ranger, and received a call a little later on from the owner telling us that she got the dog back.

For lunch, we stopped at a nice little place next to the freeway called Beckie's Restaurant and ate sandwiches.

The big destination of the day turned out to be crater lake, the deepest lake in the united states and located in the crater of a collapsed volcano. It was... one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen.

For dinner, we ate at a thai place we found in eugene, oregon. It was a tiny bit pricey, but we've been pretty frugal with food so far.

Finally, we ended the day by driving a couple more hours to the hotel we're staying at in Portland, Oregon.

We're going to spend the day in Portland tomorrow, wandering around and watching the new Pixar movie "Up" at some point during the day.