From Medford

We've been busy! I'm in the hotel lobby at 5:00 AM in Medford, awake early, as always. Here's an update:

We got out of the house earlier than expected on Friday - it really helps when the hardwood floor guys show up an hour early! They were really nice and helped us move all the furniture, which we had cleaned out and were just starting to move ourselves.
So at 8:40 we were on the road to Crater Lake, after getting gas and stopping for food for Moose because we finished off the last of his that morning. We stopped at a rest stop where I discovered, as I tried to take a picture of Mali at her second phone booth in two days, that my camera battery is still sitting in its charger in the kitchen. I wanted to be sure I could take lots of photos this weekend. Irony.

Crater Lake was/is beautiful, of course. We were very lucky as it was 60 degrees or so and there was a couple of inches of snow covering everything but the road, making everything exceptionally beautiful. We threw lots of snowballs, and took lots of pictures with my sad little cell phone camera. We stopped by the lodge to check it out - and of course they had openings because of cancellations because of the snow, but we were stuck with our reservations at the Union Creek Resort.
We made it there in time for a fun dinner at Beckie's Cafe. The cabins are very nice - it is an old, well-maintained CCC logging camp. No TV, which was fine. We played hearts, and we all laughed like crazy - I had tears in my eyes. EVERYBODY went back to zero except Andrew, who'd been ahead the hole game but ended up losing. It was the longest game of hearts I've ever played.

For Breakfast, Mali and I made S'Mores in the oven, a trick we learned camping with everyone at the coast. We experimented and made some banana ones too, which turned out surprisingly yummy, but of course very messy. We got a late start heading towards the Oregon Caves, but we had time to stop at Wal-Mart and buy me a new camera - the pocket-sized one I wanted for my birthday. Stopping was good, because we also got an important correction to our directions to the caves.
The Oregon Caves are incredible. The outside mountain was wonderfully green and mossy, and the inside was quite an experience. Even the cynical teenager in our group was impressed with the cave itself. Our tour guide - Suzan - was fun. There is a big CCC lodge there that is even better than the lodge at Crater lake. They had available rooms too, but we left to meet the soccer team at the Marriot Courtyard in Medford.
Mali was in the pool with her teammates before we had half the stuff in the room, since we ran Moose around outside for awhile. We left him in the car for a couple hours while we had dinner, and then snuck him in with us for the evening.
Dinner was take-out from Kalaidescope Pizza, which Susy, Dan and I picked up for the whole team, and we ate and drank beer and wine in the lobby until 10:00.