Only took about 2 hours, on a good road, to get to our new campground by Crater Lake. Actually, the campground is about 40 miles away from Crater Lake Nat’l Park. It’s an absolute jewel! Every site is surrounded by tall Lodgepole pines; every site has a soft carpet of pine needles outside its front door. Each site is spacious, and private. One of the best we’ve ever been at! We had a back-in, right up to large trees, but was no problem, as the manager guided us right in.
After we got settled in, rested a while, and had a
late lunch, we decided to venture into the National Park to get some literature
to help us determine how we wanted to spend our time here. Was a beautiful drive in, surrounded by
forests of pines and spruces, although it wasn’t as good as it could have been
because it was pretty hazy. We saw signs
later that seemed to indicate that the
haze was due to smoke from fires.
Drove to
the south entrance Visitors Center, where we saw a stellar film which narrated
both the geologic and climatological cause of the lake (a catastrophic volcanic
eruption about 7,700 years ago, 200 times as strong as Mt. St. Helens, which
blew the top and sides away from what was undoubtedly the tallest mountain in
Oregon at the time; over time, snow melt and rain filled the resulting
caldera. The result is the deepest lake
in the U.S., and the deepest blue in the world.
The deep blue color is because the water in the caldera lake is totally
self-contained; there is no watershed of stream feeding into it, nor none out
of it; therefore, no contaminants are ever introduced. The water is the purest on earth.), and the
human side of its story, especially its impact on human emotions.
It was closing time now for the Visitors
Center, so we decided to take a short drive up the western rim. A 33-mile drive loops around the rim of the
caldera, which we’ll do tomorrow. But we
thought we’d just get a peep of the lake this evening. Whether it was because of the time of day
(dusk), and/or the smoky haze, the lake wasn’t the deep blue that we’d seen in
the film and in photographs. Still
lovely, but not breathtaking. .jpg)
We did have a very good view of Wizard Island, a
secondary small volcano within the large one which was formed from a cinder
cone after a secondary eruption a few hundred years after the main event.
Came home and fixed tilapia for dinner. Ate outside!
One of the few times on this trip.
It was too inviting not to – perfect temp, a picnic table right there,
the fresh scent of the pines. The
stillness, the quietness, the waning light at 7:30 all reminded us of the end
of our trip last year, coming down the Cassiar Hwy in Canada, stopping at
beautiful forested campgrounds which were becoming more and more quiet, less
and less filled. Another evocative
reminder of the changing of seasons and passage of time.
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