To Crater Lake

The whole reason for this adventure trip was to get to Crater Lake after we'd hiked Brokeoff Mountain with Laurie and Brenda.  We planned to get up there early in the day, and to hike down from the Rim to the Lake surface, which is about 1000 ft down in 1.1 miles.  We even considered taking the boat ride to Wizard Island for an explore before we faced the big climb back to the Rim.  But fate was not with us, as you'll see.

We discovered a "sandal-wood" tree at an overlook pullout

from one place, we could look down to a roaring waterfall far below

Looked over the edge at another spot and found this river gorge with strange pinnacle shaped sand spires

This tells us that the pumice covered water and lava created a steam-vent world that blew minerals into spires as the air cooled the mixture and drifted back to earth.

the rain became more insistent as we climbed towards our goal.

at the Visitor's Center, the rain became sleet

Inside was this lovely topo-map of the lake and it's bottom.

pretty bushes

okay, now it's fun, right?  holiday-ish.

the parking lot construction and stinging blizzard precluded photo taking outside the Crater Lake Lodge, so here's a bad photo of a photo to look at.  

the Reception area.  The posts and walls had real bark, so they weren't fake!

here's a stairway

one of the main rooms, with the dining hall at the far end.

the view of Crater Lake

we moved over to the Rim Village lodge, where we sipped cocoa, wrote postcards, and Jeffery put the stamp I bought him into his National Parks Passport, near the rubber date stamps he got at the Visitor's Bureau.

by the time we left the Rim Village, the snow had accumulated

the road down the hill

back at Annie's, the chairs are artistically dusted

Annie's Cafe at the Mazama Village by the south entrance to Crater Lake Park.

Our drive down the mountain took us fairly quickly out of the snow and into misty rain and even patchy sun at rare moments.  I'll show you the Rogue River in the next post.