N to O: Sisters, OR to High Desert Museum to campspot near Chemult, OR

Woke up around 9am and started searching for oil change places in Bend. We found one that could fit us in at 2pm, so we started driving east and looked up the offices of KPOV, the community radio station we had picked up the night before. We found the offices in Bend, OR and were welcomed by the Office Manager of the station who had a meeting but was gracious enough to show us around the offices and studio. As we are currently involved with an effort to start a community radio station, it was great to visit one that had been successfully operating for almost a decade. They were in the process of transitioning from low-power fm to high-power fm and she was pleased to hear that we could pick up the signal where we had been camping. She had to attend her meeting so we drove to the National Forest Office and found out that the campgrounds and hot springs on the nearby volcano that we hoped we could camp in were still underwater due to late snow melt. We inquired about other roads and their general condition and decided we needed to do some more research on where to camp that night. On the walk to a restaurant recommended in our ancient Moon Guidebook we passed by a food cart called Spork and decided just to eat there. It was amazing, we shared shrimp ceviche tacos and pork with rice for $13 plus tip, and there were no leftovers, but we were well full. We had spent the perfect amount of time running errands around Bend and had to rush over to Happy Danes Quality Auto Repair, Inc. for our oil change appointment. They were a great shop - honest, reasonably priced, and friendly, and we were happy and lucky to have found them. The mechanic thought we were pretty ridiculous for warning him about the viscous cat in the back, so when he came back to the office with one arm tucked in his shirt as if she had ripped his limb off, we all laughed. We also felt better about heading into the High Desert now that Annie had new oil and all of her fluids topped off. Emily had visited the High Desert Museum outside of Bend, when she was a kid (20 years ago?) and remembered it as being pretty cool, especially the birds of prey. As we were about to spend some significant time in the High Desert, it seemed appropriate to learn about its flora and fauna. The museum has grown significantly over the past two decades - there were more exhibits inside and the walking path took us to around to the otter habitat, a historical farmhouse and sawmill and the birds of prey building. Max tried valiantly to photograph the otters, but small children kept running into his shots as the otter circled the water pool. He called them "otter hogs" and gave up. We saw owls, kestrels, hawks and a bald eagle in the birds of prey exhibit - none of them shrieked for us, but they did seem to be watching us... Inside, we got to see a rattlesnake close up so we could identify on a desert walk (actually, hopefully we never have to do that) and a gila monster that seemed sleepy. But maybe they just look like they are yawning. They have also acquired two big cats - a cougar and a lynx - that had been abandoned pets. They were sleeping too and kind of resembled Buzz when she naps. Finally, there was a great exhibit that walked you through the various ways that the High Desert has been used by humans from the Paleo-Indians to the first explorers to settlers. After leaving the museum we turned down a road that seemed like it would have some promising dispersed campgrounds, but the excessive washboards made it impossible to go very far. Teeth rattling, we turned around and turned to the Public Lands website for an alternative. A free National Forest campground - Corral Springs - was not too far away, near Chemult, OR so we decided that was our best bet, and close to Crater Lake National Park, our next day's destination. As we were picking out our spot, a vehicle drove up - it was a nice gentleman named Sam who was looking for a friend that sometimes camps there. He wasn't, but he invited us to watch him carve a log into Bigfoot with a chainsaw the next morning in front of a restaurant in Chemult. After he drove off and we started to make some pasta for dinner, we began to wonder why anyone would want to stay there. Swarms of mosquitoes would not leave us alone, no matter how much we doused ourselves in bug spray. We had to eat inside the van and then pretty much stayed inside the whole night. We were sad that we finally had a picnic table, and we couldn't even use it. We hoped that if we went to bed early enough, we might be able to get up before they did.

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