Oregon: Upper Klamath Lake

Believe it or not, there's a lot of water out on this part of the country! Coming from a drought-stricken desert where the better part of my lifespan has been spent conserving water and watching our most precious resource dwindle and wither away, it's kind of mind-blowing to drive for hours and pass one body of water after the next. From one river to a boat launch at the end of a neighborhood street, to endless lakes, there's so much water in this area! This, of course, facilitates the explosion of greenery that you'll see as you drive along. Coincidentally, there's quite a lot of farmland proliferating throughout the region, perhaps due to this abundant foliage and potential grazing lands. Like I said, coming from a desert, this all seems a bit weird. Everything is so green, and there's so much life springing from every nook and cranny, any location where a fortuitous foothold might be struck and dug into. The tracts of mankind's interjections can be seen stripping the land in bland, blase streaks of nudity, but even with our tireless efforts nature, uhh...finds a way... 

Upper Klamath Lake is one of these bodies of water you may find yourself driving by, should you follow a similar path to ours. There's something poetic in the blue sky touching the tippy-tops of purple mountains before a horizon of pallid water stretches out below. It's majestic, one could say. Inspiring. It can be difficult at times to quantify just how large these United States actually are...in the span of three days we'd driven over 1,000 miles (1,609 Km)! And we still had some miles yet to traverse before reaching our destination, too. We drove more than the entire length of the country of Italy (1,185Km or 736 miles)! We'd safely traversed the Extra-terrestrial highway in South-Central Nevada, visited Reno without getting divorced, spent the night and troubleshot some vehicular difficulties in the town of Merrill, in Southern Oregon...and now? Now we'd made it here, to Upper Klamath Lake, a beautiful expanse of blue where the earth and the sky blow kisses at each other. I recommend pulling over to take a moment and appreciate all the beauty surrounding you because if there's one thing you can say about nature it's that she's an absolutely inimitable genius. I mean, humans do some cool stuff- like the Cavendish banana is tasty enough, though it's potentially going to go extinct in our lifetime due it's simplistic genetics. Again, leave it to nature, she'll, uh, find a way.

Onward!

💘

XOXO,

NAU