I caught myself getting really bummed this afternoon pulling into a private RV park after figuring out last night that (despite what I swear I read somewhere online) both Mazama Campground at Crater Lake and the ones at Diamond Lake convenient to the park were closed for the season, as were most of the state and county parks along the Rogue River. So we stopped at the closest private RV park we could find that was open, and I proceeded to sulk. This wasn't miles from the rim of Crater Lake. This wasn't boondocking off a forest road. This wasn't on the edge of a gorge with the Rogue crashing on the rocks below. This sucked. And then I actually looked around and it sunk in. We knew we were traveling in the off season. We knew we'd have to be flexible, although we'd imagined it might be because of relentless Northwest rain or even snow. Instead, it was 70 degrees outside, and we were camped in the pines under an hour from a stunning National Park we'd been excited to visit for a long time. In fact, the campground *did* have a walking path down to the Rogue River, and with some attitude adjustment, we made a plan to hitch up the bike trailer to explore overlooks for several waterfalls just across the Crater Lake Highway from our spot. Tomorrow, we'll tow the trailer up to the rim of Crater Lake and then continue north to see if we can scrounge up some open camping up near Tokatee Falls along the Umpqua Scenic Byway, something we likely would have missed if we had just hit Mazama Campground and then made a beeline for Bend. Good lessons in flexibility and remembering that even when things don't work out as planned, I need to take a look around and I might just find that things are still pretty good. There's a new and even better plan in there somewhere. #airstream#liveriveted #airstreamwithkids
