WEDNESDAY, SEPT 10

WEDNESDAY, SEPT 10:

     Woke to another clear, sunny day – our last here.  Took our time again and enjoyed the cool, crisp morning.  Ever since we’ve been in southern Oregon, the nights have gotten pretty chilly – down in the 40’s.  Bill says he can see his breath when he walks Pappy before breakfast.  But by  12 or 1:00, it’s warmed up by about 30-40 degrees!

     At noon, drove in to the Park for the last time.  We had our boat tour booked  for 3:30, and wanted to allow plenty of time.  We stopped one more time at Rim Village to buy a little Christmas ornament and a few other goodies.  The mid-day light on the lake made the reflections dazzling.  We are so glad and grateful for the past couple of days - that we got to see this lake at its spectacular best.

                                                                                                            

     Continued on the rim drive til we came to Cleetwood Cove, where we parked the truck, signed in, and began the 1.1 mile steep descent downhill to the boat dock.  Bill was a little stiff from the last two days’ hikes, but we’d given ourselves plenty of time, so just went at a slow pace. 

     There were probably a couple of dozen people on the boat tour.  It takes about 2 hours, and goes around the perimeter of the lake.  A Ranger is on board to give geologic, natural history, and human history explanations.  As we’ve come to expect, Ranger Matt’s narrative was outstanding.  This was his first season at Crater Lake (he’s been at 4 other National Parks), and he taught himself and learned so much in this summer, which he passed on to us.  

     The boat tour itself was wonderful.  It was great to see the caldera from this new perspective – to be actually down in it, see the volcanic rock interior up close,

                                                     

                                             Devil's Backbone - a lava tube:

and to see some of the features we’d seen from a distance on the rim now close up.  The afternoon light was perfect. 

                                                   Up close to Wizard Island: 

Cruised right next to the Phantom Ship:

                                          And an inside view of Pumice Castle:

 

 

      The water is as brilliantly blue up close as it is from a distance.  A couple of times, we were invited to look over the edge of the boat and look down to view the bottom of the lake.  You could actually see the rocks at the bottom at 40 feet deep!  Scientists here do on-going analyses of the clarity of the lake by determining how deep you can still see an object.  The world record for clarity was recorded here in 1997 at 142 feet!  Virtually unheard of!  Ranger Matt filled our water bottles with pure lake water for those who wanted it.  Ummm, now we’ve tasted the gold standard for pure water.

     In spite of the strenuous climb back up (at least it was almost all in the shade at 5:30), this was still a perfect way to end our stay here, to see the whole panorama of the 6-mile wide lake, the colorful and ragged rock faced walls surrounding the lake, and the forests lining those rock walls.   A common theme we often heard here is how such utter beauty was born out of devastation.  In the aftermath of the volcanic eruption, literally everything within 30 square miles was obliterated.  But within a few hundred years, life began anew and is now a place of unmatched beauty.  It’s really a metaphor from the natural world of how God is in the business of creating human and spiritual beauty out of ugliness, destruction, and brokenness.  Reminds me of that old Andre Crouch song, “Something Beautiful.”   (Something beautiful, something good . .. All my confusion He understood . ..  . All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife . . . But He made something beautiful of my life.”

     But just as in the human realm there are reminders of past ugliness, so there are here.  In the form of sand/dust everywhere!  It’s actually fine pumice – finely ground lava rock.  So most of the trails and non-paved areas are like walking on beach sand, with some forest dirt mixed in. You start feeling that it’s in your every pore!  That’s about the only thing we won’t miss as we journey on north from this awe-inspiring place.