Background:
I haven't seen any trip reports on Oregon so I decided to write to trip report for those considering going. I've wanted to go to see Crater Lake National Park for some time now after reading a thread on Flyertalk where people listed the most beautiful places they have been to. Quite a few mentioned Crater Lake so after some research the trip planning began. Because the park is in the mountains it's constantly snowed in during most of the year, so you can only drive through the park from June-September. With that in mind we decided to go on Chol Hamoed Succos from Sunday-Tuesday which would be at the end of September and allow us to avoid the snow season. We also wanted to see some of the scenery in Oregon near Portland, as well as the Redwood Trees in northern California. We drove quite a bit but it wasn't too bad for our standards.
We booked our outbound flight on Southwest using the companion pass and points, which got us into Portland at about 11am. Because our time was short we didn't want to drive all the way back to Portland at the end of our trip so we drove to Medford OR and used 4500 Avios points for an Alaska flight to Portland. For the return we booked a United redeye flight going to ZFV which got us a great fare. For food, we brought bagels, cream cheese, and meat sandwiches after Shabbos, which we then refrigerated and put in cold bags for the trip. On our way back to NY we stopped at the Portland JCC, where they have a kosher meat menu on Tuesday nights (the rest of the week it's dairy only). We arranged for a refrigerator for each hotel we stayed at to refreeze our ice packs and refrigerate the food. Speaking of hotels, we booked a IHG resort property on pointbreaks, and for the 2nd night we used points on a courtyard. For a succah, we brought a tent on Amazon for $50 and cut off some schach from a schach mat.
