We’re back from visiting three more National Parks!  Our road trip through Washington, Oregon, and California covered almost 2000 miles and we camped a total of 8 nights in Crater Lake, Lassen Volcanic, and the Redwoods.  It was amazing and the kids did great – we hiked a bunch, there was almost no complaining on the long drives, and they were still getting along and not tired of camping by the end!  We’ll get our write-up and photos posted as soon as we can.

Sadly, there are currently a ton of wildfires across these states.  Our route weaved among them and the smoke was ever present (with the exception of Lassen).  We seemed to have been very fortunate with the timing of our visit to Crater Lake.  We spoke to various people who had visited the days before and after us and they had reports of not being able to see across the lake, roads being closed, and even a voluntary evacuation of the campground due to the smoke.  The north entrance is now closed in order to fight fires.  We had no idea things were so bad when we left on the trip!  Say a prayer for rain and the safety and efforts of all those fighting the fires.

Our route marked on a map of the wildfires from the EPA’s site, airnow.gov