At seven o’clock the cars were ready, and the start was at last made on the last lap for Crater Lake.
“It’s only eighty miles—even a bit less from here, I guess. But it’s up-hill all the way, and of course we don’t know what kind of roads we’re going to get into.”
For many miles they ran along past scattered ranches where the irrigation ditches paralleled the road, and the alfalfa scented the air. Then the country began to get rougher, the road began to climb, the tumbling, foaming green river dropped farther and farther below them into a wild ravine, while they climbed along the side.
“This is something like!” Bennie shouted. “Bring on some more of your old wilderness!”
“You’ll get some more pretty soon now.”
They passed a little settlement, where both cars stopped for gas and to let the engines cool, and then the road ran into a forest, and traveled straight as an arrow, making a long aisle as far as the eye could see.
“Government forest,” the doctor said. “This is a government road. Well, boys, what do you think of these trees?”
The boys looked on either side of the dusty white road, into stands of Douglas fir that almost took their breath away—great giants six and eight feet through, and rising without any branches for a hundred feet or more, straight as masts, and after the first branches going on up another fifty or a hundred feet.
“Some shrubs,” said Bennie.
“You’ll see a lot of bigger ones before we get back to Portland,” said the doctor.