Crater Lake

 Day 51: 13 July 2021 (Happy Birthday Rowena, Pam, Haley! 🎂)

We visit Crater Lake NP (and I take 480 pictures of it!)

That Lake can’t take a bad picture. I have a dozen frame-able ones from our visit today. We took the Discovery Point trail and each time you changed position, there was another stunning view of Crater Lake! 

I was wearing my Cal Berkeley t-shirt and got no less than 3 “Go Bears”. When you see someone wearing Ohio State attire, you casually say “O-H” on the trail…and they respond “I-O”. It’s just something you do. Casual. With Cal, it’s “Go Bears” and “Go Bears”. Casual. It warms my heart because living in Ohio now, I don’t hear it a lot!

Have I mentioned that it’s been warm…we left Illinois in the rain and since then, we’ve had clear (or smoky) blue skies and heat. Lots of heat. I have three pairs of glasses I cycle through. At camp, I wear my “computer glasses”. When driving or when Dan’s driving, I wear my polarized suns; or, sometimes, facing away from direct sunrises, I’ll wear my distance glasses. I keep the two pairs I’m not wearing, nested together in a hard case on the passenger door compartment. (Can you tell where this is going?) How many times have I told patients to NOT keep their glasses in a hot car? When we came down off Lassen, it was 115 degrees. I kept my glasses in the car when we got “home” and never thought about it. Until I put them on when we were driving to Crater Lake. The front surface of the lenses, more right lens than left, is crazed. That means the coating got fried in the heat. I can still see through it but it looks like the lens needs to be cleaned. Oy. You would think *I* would know better!!! (But again, this HEAT!!)

Phantom Ship formation and it’s reflection 💜

The view everyone has, taken from the visitor’s center, around 9:45 am. The reflections sharpened as the sun got higher in the sky. The first time you see the lake come into view, you can’t help but gasp.

Deepest lake in the US (1943’); 6.02 miles across at it’s widest; 4.54 miles at it’s minimum; holds 4.9 trillion gallons of water, fed by snow and rainwater with no outlets other than what seeps into the basin. The water level stays pretty consistent over time.

Color: from lime green to pastels on the sides of the crater to the deep blue of the water

A good view of Wizard Island in Crater Lake

These weather-beaten old trees are special favorites of mine

Taken from the Phantom Ship viewing area

Vidae Falls as seen along the East Rim Drive

Vidae Falls doe

Rogue River

On our way to/from the Lake, we stopped at a couple of sites where we could view the Rogue River after a short walk from the parking lot. Both were worthwhile stops. At the first one in the morning, we learned about lava tubes, both open and plugged. The more you learn, the more you see. On the way home, we stopped to see the “natural bridge”. It was not like any bridge I expected to see. It is lava rock but a large lava tube diverts the River through, under ground, and it emerges over 100 feet downstream. So weird—so wonderful!

If you know what you’re looking for, you can see two (at least two!) lava tubes. There is one near the top of the bank that looks like a cave; that one is a collapsed lava tube. There is one below it, bigger, with a plug of solidified lava in it.

Rogue River Chasm

A lava field near the river

Beautiful turquoise color to the water

This lava tube forms a cave. The river flows into it and out again.

This one is kind of hard to explain. This is where part/most of the river flows into a large lava tube and then flows downstream UNDERGROUND. It emerges in the next photo, farther along. The area it flows through is considered a type of natural bridge (but unlike any I’ve ever seen!).

You can see the re-emergence of the river, coming out beyond those bushes. (I wish I had that pen like in SnapChat so I could point to the exact spot!) It’s where you see the white foamy water.

Just because. The details were so beautiful and it’s the kind of thing you hike by quickly and never SEE.

Bike around the park

After we had dinner, we took the bike path to the day use area, 1.7 miles from our camping area, then went in the other direction for 2.3 miles; 5-6 miles total.

Manzanita archway

Creek at sunset

We had quite a day. Tomorrow we drive to just across the Columbia River to get ready to see Mt Hood. Stay tuned!