Our adventures in Oregon continue from Bend to Eugene and beyond. On the way to Eugene we stopped to camp near some hot springs and hiked into the springs for a nighttime dip. It was nice to soak our sore muscles after the big climb up Mt. Adams. The next day we met a cool couple at the campground and had breakfast with them before heading into Eugene.

Eugene is certainly an organic vegan’s paradise. The food was simply amazing! We ate at the Keystone Cafe, Cozmic Pizza, and Morning Glory, all wonderful places full of delicious vegetarian & vegan options and organic goodness. We also played disc golf in Eugene at a small city course, and on the way out at an awesome course in Dexter State Park. Eugene seemed pretty conscious, and had plenty of natural food stores, yoga centers, and progressive publications to read. We stocked up on organic food at a natural food store and camped once more near the hot springs, riding our bikes a few miles from the campground to the springs for another splendid nighttime dip.

Me, Juneau, and Wizard IslandAfter a couple of days in Eugene, we made our way to Crater Lake National Park. Neither of us had ever visited, and we were blown away by the beauty of the lake and the story behind it. Crater Lake was formed when Mount Mazama, a huge volcano, imploded over 7,000 years ago. It created a round deep lake rimmed by crater walls and mountains. Wizard Island sticks up out of the lake, itself a volcano cone. We took tons of pictures of the lake and the interesting volcanic geology surrounding it.

We spent all day exploring Crater Lake National Park, even taking a quick dip in the frigid waters of the lake! It was definitely refreshing, but we couldn’t last longer than a few seconds in the water. We also climbed Mt. Scott, the park’s highest point at 8,938 feet, for a great view of the lake and surrounding area. We camped in the park and headed out the next morning for Mt. Shasta, California.

It wasn’t long after leaving Crater Lake before we caught a view of Mt. Shasta, a beautiful 14,162 ft. mountain in the Cascades. We checked out the natural food store in the town of Mount Shasta, then headed up the mountain for some hiking. We hiked around the beautiful alpine Panther Meadows and up to Gray Butte. It was getting dark on the way down from the butte, but the almost-full moon lit our way. We camped on Mt. Shasta and did some more hiking the next day, but probably will save climbing it for a warmer season!

First View of Mt. ShastaMt. Shasta has a magnetic appeal to it, the mountain is beautiful and several local Native American tribes hold it sacred. We felt really drawn to the area and hope to return to at least climb the mountain, but it’s also on our list of possible places to move. For now we’re leaving for Lassen Volcanic National Park, then through Redding to Arcata. Then we’ll be heading down the coast, and we’re looking forward to some warmer weather!

As for the greasecar, we haven’t been having much luck finding filtered vegetable oil on the road so far. Everyone we’ve tried connecting with on FillUp4Free.com hasn’t responded yet. Our portable pump and filtration set-up was barely trickling oil through when we tried in Boise, and we figured that with colder weather (and thus colder oil), it wasn’t going to work well. So we’ve been looking for biodiesel and will probably end up buying some big jugs of virgin veggie oil now that we’re in California and diesel is a bit more spendy. We have discovered on this trip that although veg oil is great for long trips, sourcing it and filtering it can be difficult to do on the road. It definitely helps to have a home base where we can have a steady grease source, settle the oil for a while (to remove animal fats and hydrogenation), then heat it and filter it. It’s quite a process, and we’re pretty picky with the oil we’ll put in our baby, so it helps to have space and time to prepare the oil, which we just don’t have on the road. Hopefully we’ll find some fellow greasers along the way that can give us filtered and properly processed waste oil, otherwise we’ll have to stick to biodiesel and virgin veg oil.