Day 66: La Pine to Crater Lake, OR

Date: 6/26/2015
Time: 6pm
Weather: Chilly all day
Location: Mazama campground, Crater Lake

8 days left.

Two days ago I tried biking in a parking lot. My knee was hurting so much that I stopped in less than 5 seconds. I was really upset about that.

Last night I tried again at Mazama campground and I could finally make a full rotation on my left knee. I did a couple laps with Sarah and Corinne. Then when I got back to the campground, Emmy and Lizzie asked me to do one loop with them, and so I did. But I still got pretty scared. I wished I was still the little girl who was never afraid of anything. As I grow older, I'm just so afraid that I will risk myself dying at a young age. It's just so hard to be brave again when you realize you have a lot of future plans/responsibilities going on.

Well back to I4K journey.

We camped at one of the most beautiful places on earth-Crater Lake. I was planning to bike yesterday to Crater Lake cause I knew the route was gonna be so pretty. Sometimes you just can't force stuffs I guess. I was sagging in the van the entire day yesterday. Somehow I was glad that I didn't bike though. The curvy road going up through the Cascade mountain has no shoulder and the drop was about 1000 ft. And it was pretty cold, no, it was super cold. I had the heater in the van on the entire way. I left the van for less than 10 minutes to get pictures and I ran immediately back in the van cause I was freezing.

We stopped at the gift shop for kinda long. I picked up some souvenirs there too! :D Not gonna lie the stuffs there are so expensive. They sell pretty yummy hot dog but it costs $5.50. I was pretty hungry so I got a potato salad and a chocolate muffin for $3.25 and $3.75 respectively.

We went to the campground after and set up our tent and had sandwiches for dinner. It was pretty troublesome cause our campsites were spread out. And there were supposed to be only two tents per site. I was at site 12 with Sarah, Corinne, and Khrystyna. The other tent was Diego's, Joe's, and Jason's.

I went to bed around 10pm. Before I went to bed Corinne asked me if I had already put my food in the bear box. I honestly thought it was just a joke. I didn't know that's a real thing. Then Sarah came into the tent and asked me if I saw the sign of beware of bears. I was like yeah I saw that. Then I started panicking-all of the what ifs exploded in my mind. What if we were attacked by the bears in the middle of the night? What if the bears take my food in the bear box? What if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and a bear just came up and eats me? Corinne had to assure me that I'll be fine so I'll be able to sleep.