MONDAY, SEPT 8

MONDAY, SEPT 8:

    After breakfast drove into the National Park.  Picked up a couple of Grab ‘n’ Go sandwiches at the café in the little Rim Village for lunch, and began our 33-mile drive around the rim loop.  Still smoky – in fact, probably more than yesterday.  A Ranger said that there were 3 major forest fires affecting the air, the largest of which was in Northern Calif/Southern Oregon.  I think that the optimum time to see this lake at its purest might be June-mid July, before the seasonal fires have a chance to begin.   Of course, it would also be much more crowded then. 

     We stopped at a couple of viewpoints
  

                                                                     

                                            A tour boat passing by Wizard Island:
                                            

 

before we arrived at the Cleetwood Cove Trailhead.  This is a very steep 1.1 mile trail which leads down to the tour boat dock.  It’s the only trail within the interior of the caldera, and the only way to get to the lake itself; if you want to take a tour boat, you must take this trail.  Since we read that it was steep and strenuous and should only be attempted by people in reasonably good physical shape, our idea was to hike about half-way down to get an idea of what it was like and to assess whether we thought we could do it before we purchased boat tickets.  Well, going down was so easy that we were nearly at the bottom before we realized it.  As long as we were down there, at the boat dock, we asked if there were any openings on the tour coming up.  But there weren’t.  So, we rested for a while, and then began the climb up.  The equivalent of 65 flights of stairs, we’d read!  But, as one fellow hiker said, “You go up the same way you got down – by putting one foot in front of the other!”   And that’s the way we got back up!  Now, if we want to take the boat tour, we have to do it all over again!  We’ll try to get tickets for Wednesday, to give Bill’s legs a day to recuperate. 

     Drove a few miles further to a picnic spot, and had our lunch.  We were very hungry, and it tasted wonderful!  A lovely secluded spot with both sun and shade from tall pines.

     Then continued on down the eastern side of the rim loop, stopping at highlights:  Pumice Castle Overlook, which features a layer of orange pumice rock that has been eroded into the shape of a medieval castle;

                                                                  

Phantom Ship Overlook, Crater lake’s “other island” which is made of erosion-resistant lava and resembles a small sailing ship, though it’s actually as tall as a 16-story building;       

and the Pinnacles Overlook, a 6-mile detour from the rim drive which showcases 100 feet spires which are being eroded from the caldera wall . . . they were formed when volcanic gases rose up through a layer of volcanic ash, cementing the ash into solid rock. 

     On our drive home from the Park, even though we both felt pretty tired, we made a stop at the Rogue Gorge Overlook, which is right off the highway just a few miles from the campground, and which our camp host insisted was a Must-See.  He was right!  From where the Rogue River begins in Crater Lake National Park (though not from the lake itself, but from excess rain runoff), it rushes through a narrow gorge here – at some points just 25 feet wide - on its way to the Grants Pass area where we rafted it, to finally empty into the Pacific near Gold Beach where we spent that one night.  We remember Steve, our rafting guide, talk about the first person to kayak the entire Rogue from Crater Lake to the ocean . . . after seeing this, we wondered how in the world he (or anyone subsequent to him) made it through this section!  If we take another rafting trip around here, we’ll be sure to ask!

                                                                   

     Home around 8:00, and had our Mexican leftovers for dinner.  Nice to have something to pop into the microwave after a physically tiring day!