by Shawn Inmon
When we embarked on our travels, we had just a few “must-sees” in mind—The Alamo, Key West, a lighthouse in Maine. Crater Lake fit that category, too. When you talk to people who have seen it, they often get a faraway look in their eyes and say something like, “You’ve just got to see it for yourself.” We intended to.
This had the makings of another scorching-hot day, which would be a constant theme on this trip. Before we left our motel that morning, our host had said, “If you’re heading up to Crater Lake, be sure to stop for breakfast at Beckie’s Café on the way.” He said some people use a visit to Crater Lake as an excuse to have breakfast at Beckie’s.
We both love breakfast, so we pulled in. It’s across the street from a rustic lodge and, yes, was crowded. The presence of an overflow parking lot is usually a good sign. The food was great, the service friendly, and we even got a free floor show.
Halfway through our pancakes and french toast, we heard a man say, “I’ve got to run out to my car to get my wallet. I’m not gonna run off on ya.” I leaned across to Dawn and said: “That’s exactly what I’d have someone say in one of my books if they were gonna run off.”
The man was loud, and obviously a little drunk at 9:30 in the morning, so every eye in the café was on him as he weaved to his truck. I kind of forgot about him, but then I heard someone behind me shout, “He’s runnin’!”
Sure enough, the guy had put his truck in gear and was hustling down the road. Around the café, jaws dropped in disbelief.
“I’ll be go to Hell,” the waitress said.
After the excitement died down, we called her over to our table and asked if we could buy the guy’s breakfast. We didn’t care about the escape artist, but we didn’t want her to get docked for his malfeasance. She shook her head and said, “You’re the third table to offer that, but it doesn’t work that way here.”
Just as we were getting ready to leave, the door swung open and the same man walked back in, a little red-faced. “I told ya I wouldn’t run off on ya!” he said, fishing his wallet out of his pocket. We didn’t know if he had grown a conscience, or figured out that someone in the café knew who he was, but he was back. Beckie’s got paid, and we got a free show to go with a breakfast so big and good that we knew we wouldn’t have to worry about eating for the rest of the day.
Before I tell you what we saw, I have to ask: Do you know any of the history of how Crater Lake was formed? If you do, please skip the next couple of paragraphs. If not, stay with me, because it’s interesting.
Approximately 7,700 years ago, a blink of an eye in geological terms, Mount Mazama, estimated to have been 12,000 feet high, had a terrible case of heartburn and eventually erupted. It didn’t just blow its top like Mount St. Helens did in 1980. The eruption caused cracks to form around its entire perimeter. In just a few hours, the top of the mountain collapsed down on itself, forming a huge volcanic depression, or caldera. Over time, that caldera filled with rain and snowmelt, as the area receives an average 44 feet of snow per year.
Side note: I sometimes write time-travel stories, like The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver, so I think a lot about going back in time. I can’t help but imagine how amazing it would have been to hover over Mazama in a nice safe helicopter, at a nice safe distance, and watch that show.
The indigenous Klamath people have an oral tradition, passed down for thousands of years, about the collapse of the volcano and creation of the lake. Today it is known as Crater Lake, and has been a National Park, and thus protected, since 1902. That partially explains why it is the pristine ecosystem it is, with crystal-clear water with visibility to depths of more than 100 feet. It also explains its vivid blue color.
Some have called Crater Lake the Great Silencer, because your first glimpse tends to drive all words from your mind. It did mine. Driving into the park from the visitor’s center, Dawn and I caught little glimpses here and there, but when we were able to pull off the road and hike a little to a clearing that looked out over the lake, we were mesmerized. I am rarely at a loss for words, but it did indeed silence me.
A thirty-mile road circles Crater Lake. At least in the summer, it is an easy, relaxing drive. You can take as much or as little time as you like, with the road offering you opportunities to see it from different perspectives.
Crater Lake
One pleasing thing we noted was the plethora of languages we heard spoken by other visitors. I am not a linguist, but I heard French, German, Spanish, and any number of languages I couldn’t identify. Obviously, people around the world recognize what a rare treasure Crater Lake is and go well out of their way to see it.
As we drove away from the park on Highway 64 East, we knew that while many wonders awaited us, we’d never forget Crater Lake.
Gasping at the beauty and wonder took a lot out of us, but I had one more stop on our agenda for the day. After all, I wanted this trip to be a mixture of elements: natural wonders, historic sites, funky little roadside attractions (I was focused on finding the world’s biggest ball of twine before the trip was over) and obscure, nearly forgotten footnotes in history.
Our second stop of the day fit into that last category.
When Americans think about the fight against Japan in World War II, two things typically come to mind: Pearl Harbor and the War in the Pacific Theater. But, did you know that Japan actually launched weapons at the U.S. mainland?
During the six months from late 1944 to April 1945, the Japanese military launched about 9,000 “fire balloons,” relying on the Pacific jet stream to carry them toward their targets. The Japanese plan was to land bombs on the mainland and cause devastation. Had they been lucky, they might have hit a populated area or started a forest fire. As military actions go, it was a long shot, and almost all the balloons were a complete whiff. Three hundred of them were reported found but did no harm.
Except one. That balloon resulted in the only casualties on the U.S. mainland during World War II. On May 5, 1945, Archie Mitchell, a minister from Bly, Oregon, took his pregnant wife, Elsie, and five Sunday School students on a fishing trip. While unpacking the picnic lunch, Mitchell reported, he heard one of the children shout, “Look what I found!” The couple ran to where they heard the call, but an explosion rocked the quiet morning. Elsie Mitchell and all five children were killed in the blast of the firebomb, but Archie survived.
This felt like a vital, if mostly forgotten, part of our national history, so we set off for the memorial site. Highway 62 turned into Highway 140, and we took a late afternoon’s tour of the small towns of southern Oregon. We hit towns that barely show on a map—Chiloquin, Modoc Point, Dairy, Odessa, and finally, Bly. Our GPS pointed us toward an empty field, then a small road that ran through it.
Our tires crunched over gravel as our speed dropped to 30, 20, finally 10 mph. As I mentioned earlier, the Silver Bullet is practically a new car—and a Christmas present, to boot. As Dawn maneuvered around one pothole after another, she shot me a glance that said, I didn’t sign up to bring my new car down roads that are pockmarked like a teenager’s face. Or maybe it just meant, I’m not happy with you. I often get those two expressions mixed up.
“I’ll bet this is just a little connecting road that will have us back on a main road any minute,” I said, proving once again just how wrong I can be.
“How much farther to this memorial you want to see?”
I glanced at the GPS on my phone. “Heh. Eleven miles. I’m sure it will get better, though.”
Several miles later, not only had we not connected to a new road, but the one we were on had deteriorated. Going faster than 10 mph was a dream. Eventually, the gravel gave way to a dirt road. I hoped that would be an improvement, but it was as uneven as the previous incarnation.
A dust cloud materialized behind us and rapidly gained on us. An F250 pickup, towing a fishing boat, blew past us, country music blaring.
Dawn glanced at me. “Don’t say a word. I’m not going any faster.”
I nodde
d quick agreement, as I already felt on unsteady marital ground.
That first pickup became a small parade, as half a dozen others passed us over the next few miles, each kicking up new clouds of dust.
“Might have to redub her “The Dusty Bullet,” I quipped, unwisely.
“You owe me a car wash.”
“Yes, dear,” I said, resorting to the two words every husband memorizes early on.
Almost an hour after leaving the main highway, we rolled to a stop at a sign marking the memorial. The first thing we noticed was deep quiet. Pines and firs surrounded us, but not densely. The forest floor was softened by a thick blanket of dry needles, which dampened any sound. It felt like standing in a natural cathedral, its sacredness deepened by our knowledge of what had happened here more than seventy years ago.
The memorial stands in the exact spot where the explosion occurred. On a rock tower erected by the Weyerhaeuser Company, a huge timberland firm, is a bronze plaque listing the six victims of the bombing, with the simple inscription: In memory of those who died here, May 5, 1945 by Japanese Bomb explosion. Only place on the American Continent where death resulted from enemy action in WW II.
A tree a few feet away still bears the scars of the explosion. It stands as mute witness to the terrible things humans do to one another. Compared with the incalculable damage America caused when it dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this is a small thing. Standing there and so easily picturing what happened made it feel very real.
There’s an interesting addendum to the Japanese bomb story. The Reverend Archie Mitchell, the only survivor that day, remarried, and in 1947 volunteered to serve as a missionary in Da Lat, Vietnam. On May 30, 1962, Viet Cong entered the compound where the Mitchells and other missionaries were based, and kidnapped Mitchell and two others. Even though American and South Vietnamese intelligence organizations were able to track the location where it was believed they had been held, they were never found.
The Japanese Balloon Bomb Memorial was beautiful and somber, and it was worth driving out of our way to see, even over those roads.
Once we’d made our way back to Bly, I looked at the map. It was past dinnertime, and there weren’t a lot of promising towns ahead that might have a motel for us. We only had two options: backtrack many miles through the same small towns we had just driven through, or push on to Lakeview, in the far southeastern corner of Oregon. We had done a lot of backtracking the day before, so we headed to Lakeview.
Even that town was no sure thing. It was a Friday night, and Lakeview is a town of only 2,200. Small potatoes, unless you were comparing it with what we had driven through earlier. I pulled up my Hotels.com app and saw how many possibilities it listed in Lakeview. The answer was one, and it showed no vacancy. Pulling my Oregon and California map out, I saw there were simply no other towns of any size within 100 miles of Lakeview, no matter which way we drove.
The name Lakeview conjured up images of a wealthy enclave: a few hundred houses sitting in sun-drenched splendor around a sparkling lake, perhaps. The reality? Just another dusty, dry, eastern Oregon small town, with no lake—virtually no water, period. As it turned out, Lakeview did have things to recommend it: great hang gliding and paragliding, a hot-water geyser called Old Perpetual, and alpine skiing in the winter. It also sits 4,000 feet above sea level, one of the highest communities in Oregon.
What it doesn’t have is a lake. Or a view. But I digress.
We found the one motel in town, a dusty little two-story affair that looked as if it had seen better days. Still, I was cheered by the fact that the vacancy sign was on. I almost ran inside to ask about a room.
“Yep, still got one left,” the lady behind the counter said. “You want it?”
Typically, I inquire as to rates before I commit, but with no desire to drive another three hours looking for a bed, I said: “We’ll take it.”
The room, on the second floor and down as far from the stairs as possible, was nothing special. But it was a bed. And, across the street, was a laundromat.
We were going to be on the road close to eight weeks. The Silver Bullet’s trunk was spacious, but we still had to pack intelligently, which meant that we needed to do laundry every fifth day or so. We pulled out The Magical Mystery Bag, which looked a little less magical after we’d been grazing out of it for three days, and rooted around for dinner.
Then, I hustled across the street and started our laundry. I am the type of person who throws everything into a couple of machines, then leaves the laundromat. Dawn is a little more conscientious, so I stayed and watched everything cycle through. Eventually, Dawn crossed the street and relieved me so I could go back to the room and write up our daily blog.
By 10 p.m., on our first Friday on the road, we were lights-out, in more ways than one.
Day Five
Being free as a bird on a trip has a lot to recommend it. But I also discovered that it led to a lot of early-morning decision making. Starting out in Lakeview, Oregon, we had a lot of options. We thought about heading west again and hitting the coast of Northern California. That would allow us to go through a lot of the places we love—Monterey, Santa Clara, the gorgeous Pacific Coast Highway—but that was the problem. We loved those areas because we’ve already been there several times.
We were eager for new sights, new sounds, and new roadside attractions. So, we got on Highway 395, heading south out of Lakeview. We’d still hit California, which would mean we’d have made an appearance in all four corners of the continental United States.
I haven’t made mention yet about how we occupied ourselves while we drove. The Silver Bullet has satellite radio, which is helpful on long journeys. I remember driving across the country in the nineties and the frustration of the radio station fading out every fifty miles or so. Satellite radio almost never failed us, unless we were in deep canyons or mountains where land masses blocked us on every side.
So, we listened to satellite radio a lot. One of my favorite things was that the channel ’70s on 7 played old Casey Kasem American Top 40 shows in their entirety. On this day, they were playing one of the shows from 1977, which is right in our wheelhouse. Driving over the border into California, listening to the music (and the voice) I grew up with, my best girl by my side, made for a perfect moment.
Just south of Alturas, California, we saw a sign for the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge. We pulled off and looked around but, aside from some ducks and geese, didn’t see much. I’m sure if we had explored the preserve more fully we would have seen more, but our goal for this day was to put miles under our wheels, so we kept driving.
Like southeastern Oregon, northeastern California didn’t offer a lot in the way of scenic vistas or sites to stop and goggle over. There simply are no highways in the northwestern corner of Nevada, so we stayed on 395 all the way down to Truckee. I waited for a Grateful Dead song to come on to commemorate the occasion, (“Keep on Truckeein’”) but none did. We were forced to get onto a freeway to work our way around Tahoe and Reno, but we were glad to be back on Highway 95 South until we could catch Highway 6 East.
Mostly, all we did on this day was drive. We made over 500 miles, all in the service of getting to one place—The Clown Motel. About six months before the trip, a post had popped up in my Facebook feed about something called The Clown Motel, in Tonopah, Nevada. The name mostly gives it away, as it is a rundown little motel painted in circus colors and featuring clown décor everywhere. That post was followed by a series of dozens of people simply saying: “Nope.”
I knew we had to stay there.
Pulling into the dusty gravel parking lot, it was everything I had hoped. A garish sign quoted rates of only $42.50 per night, $2.50 per extra person. I suspected The Clown Motel was not the destination of Dawn’s dreams, so I leaned over and said, as romantically as I could, “You’re worth every bit of the extra $2.50 you’re gonna cost us here.”
It’s a wonder she stays married to me.
I promised Daw
n a nice dinner out if she would just come into the lobby with me.
Let me set the scene. Picture a typical roadside motel lobby—small and cramped, with aging, dirty carpet and a difficult-to-nail-down odor. Now, dump 500 clowns in all shapes and sizes into that lobby. That’s what we saw.
The lady at the front desk seemed to be in on the joke. After all, her weekly paychecks said “The Clown Motel” in the upper left corner, so I assumed she had some kind of a sense of humor. I had called early in the day to make a reservation because I didn’t want it to be full when we got there. In retrospect, I needn’t have worried. There were only about half a dozen other brave travelers staying at The Clown Motel on this night.
We checked in, got our key and headed to our room—me giddy with excitement, Dawn shaking her head at the fact I was giddy. I admit the room was a bit of a letdown. It was just a typical ugly roadside motel room from the early eighties. The only thing that marked it as clownish was a single small print over the bed.
The stuff of nightmares for many
Can’t have everything.
Oh, did I mention that The Clown Motel is attached to what is purported to be a haunted cemetery? Unfortunately, it was getting dark, so a tour of the graveyard had to wait until morning, as we didn’t have a flashlight with us.
I delivered the promised dinner by stumbling on a little gem called the Tonopah Brewing Company. As wonderful as the place was, it wasn’t crowded, which I guess I understand. Although it was a Saturday night, it was in Tonopah. We had great barbecue, including something they called their Nuclear BBQ sauce. Highly recommended, if you have a cast-iron stomach, as I do. We also tried their craft root beer. Very strong and different from anything you’ll find in a grocery store, but after the third sip, we didn’t miss A&W Root Beer at all.
I should mention something for anyone who might want to follow in our footsteps and stay where we stayed. There are some odd rumors about The Clown Motel—rumors of it being as haunted as the cemetery next door. One friend messaged me as we were getting ready to go to sleep to tell us that another friend had become obsessed with The Clown Motel and then committed suicide under unlikely circumstances.