Moonrise Over Susanville

Nearing the end of a longer day on the road than intended, I stopped here and took a both literally and metaphorically exhausted and mildly exasperated deep breath.  The day started in Gold Beach, Oregon, over 700 kilometers (450ish miles) and 10 hours before this photograph was taken. The original plan was to drive down the California coast and find a nice seaside campground after 400 or 500 kilometers of photographing the coastline. But the miserably stormy, wet, cold coastal weather really wasn’t favourable to either of those ideas. At a red light at Brookings, Oregon, I quickly reconnoitered inland options and reset Google for Crater Lake National Park. That choice sent me on a sine-wave course which  crossed the Oregon/California state border three times and pulled up just shy of Nevada in the small town of Susanville, California.

That got me out of the rain, though storm clouds threatened to make Crater Lake a very disappointing visit. Only a couple or so kilometers of the crater rim scenic drive were open due to heavy mid-May snowpack, and the ranger at the entry gate warned me that the clouds were low and there might be nothing but fog to see at the top.

Fortunately, it was somewhat better than that and, some time down the blogging road, I’ll probably post some photographs from there. But other than Crater Lake, a brief stop at Rogue River Gorge and some shots stolen at Gold Beach before the weather turned truly awful, the day was more about putting kilometers behind me than documenting the miles with photographs. And the long stretch from Crater Lake to Susanville only produced this one moonlit photograph.

Still intent on camping, I’d tried to find something in the vicinity of Rocky Point East Campground, but though there were several Bureau of Land Management (BLM) campsites in the Eagle Lake area, only one had opened, and it offered only “rough camping”. I was neither equipped for nor really excited about a campsite without picnic table, fire pit or even pit toilets, especially given the chill in the air. So taking some remote backroads, I pushed onto Susanville and the cheapest hotel I could find online. On the way, I came to this overlook with a pretty ideal moonrise over the little town that was my destination. So, some small compensation for the exhausted and exasperated sigh. 🙂