Our route to Crater Lake in south central Oregon took us through a couple of the state’s larger cities — Salem and Eugene — and we couldn’t resist stopping at at least one brewery, which Yelp suggested ought to be Santiam Brewery in Salem. That turned out to be a great choice; the brewery opened last year and has a heavy English pub influence (I suspect one of the head brewers to be English-American, or perhaps just a full-on Brit). I didn’t particularly care for their highly prized cask ales but most of the other samples were quite tasty. Another nice perk: we could bring in outside food, though I goofed by getting lured in by a less than stellar Thai restaurant that hustled me out of a couple dollars, grr. At Santiam I noticed also that some of their barrel-conditioning beers used a plastic fermentation lock, the same simple piece of homebrewing equipment that we used in our beer preparations — awesome.

Pleasantly plump from tasty beers and Thai, we jumped back on the road south and ventured into nearly uncharted territory. One of the roads we took actually had a flagging crew that consisted of perhaps the most memorable little construction vehicle ever, an ancient battered small pickup truck with this hilarious text emblazoned on back: “PILOT CAR. FOLLOW ME!” Follow meeeeeee became our rallying cry for the rest of the drive…

So where’d we plan on staying Saturday night? I looked at lodging facilities in Crater Lake National Park but the fancy lodge was $200+ and even Mazama Village cabins were $150 and up. Airbnb didn’t have any reasonable options in the area, so we turned to old faithful: Couchsurfing!

Liz and I had hosted several couchsurfers in Arlington over the past few years but had never tried surfing ourselves. I sent a last-minute request out that morning to a nice sounding woman who said she and her husband were interested in hosting and had recently moved to a town called Cheloquin, about 30 minutes away from the park. Even better news, the Couchsurfing search function told me that she had logged into the site just a couple days earlier — a great sign that suggested she was indeed interested and still engaged with the site’s mission. Within 20 minutes, Tina wrote back and accepted my request, adding that she and her husband Kris had arrived to their house a couple weeks before and were embarking on a homesteading adventure with dogs, chickens, ducks and goats. She gave me their address, cell phone numbers and said they were very excited to meet us, no matter how late we arrived: a very kind offer, since we underestimated our timing and didn’t get in until just after 10pm.

Kris helpfully met us out on the dark county road and guided us down their long winding driveway. We shared some of the Oregon beers we’d brought along and spent a couple hours in enthusiastic chatting with our two new friends: they were our age and had been married for about a year and a half, having met in the Chicago area, where Kris was from and Tina had been working. They’d lived in a renovated classic Airstream trailer on Tina’s parents’ property in Tennessee but had been itching to strike out on their own. Kris had spent several summers working in Alaska and had heard Oregon was “Alaska-lite, but with roads.” After doing some sleuthing, they found the Cheloquin property, sold their trailer and moved out west.

The four of us had a fantastic time chatting and Kris and Tina made a powerful informal Oregon Tourism Bureau pair. We were curious about their occupations and learned that Tina worked as a paralegal in Klamath Falls, a larger town about 30 miles south, and Kris was an overall jack of all trades: handyman, guide, burgeoning dairy farmer and just brimming with countless ideas.

We could’ve stayed up for hours talking but the roadtripping was catching up to me and I started nodding off. Before we crashed, Liz suggested we go outside to look at the stars—a brilliant idea because the stars themselves were incredibly brilliant. My iPhone couldn’t quite capture the splendor but it was plenty striking: a gorgeous expanse of dark sky, sparkling stars, a prominent swathe of the Milky Way and faint shooting meteors every few minutes. The best part, and what we couldn’t quite see until morning? Their property backed up to Agency Lake, a lovely shallow expanse. After soaking up the morning breeze off the lake, we bade farewell to Kris and Tina and continued our drive to Crater Lake.

A few miles inside the park, we stopped at Annie Creek, a scenic pull-off. We hopped out, snapped a few pictures and returned to the car… where I realized I’d made my worst mistake of the trip: leaving the keys on the seat, not knowing the car would bizarrely auto lock all the doors. “NOOOOOO,” echoed out of the park as we pulled on all of the door handles in vain. A kindly Swiss couple happened to be at the lookout at the same time and cheerfully drove us several miles to the Mazama campgrounds, where I embarked on an hourlong and ultimately futile attempt to arrange a locksmith through State Farm. A hostess at the Annie Creek restaurant recommended we talk to the general manager, who said a park ranger would probably be able to help and radioed in a request. The manager then drove us back down to the car and a ranger arrived within 10 minutes. After asking a couple quick questions to determine that it was indeed our car we were asking him to break into, he pulled out some impressive tools (including a five-foot thin piece of pliable metal called “Big Easy”), stuck a little pouch in the driver’s side door and slowly inflated it until he could wedge Big Easy into the car cabin. After a couple arduous minutes of wiggling Big Easy around, the ranger finally nudged the end of the metal piece against the unlock button on the car’s center console: jackpot unlocked!

We thanked him profusely and tried to give him some shekels for his trouble but he refused politely and asked we donate it to the park instead. He was an awesome example of a ranger, and the experience endeared us even more to our national parks and the stand-up men and women who maintain them.