Crater Lake

After we left Mt. Hood, we spent one night in Bend, Oregon on our way to Crater Lake with Bill and Debbie. They got the full RV experience, including taking down and setting up camp. We weren't in Bend for long so there are only a few pictures from there. We went to Pilot Butte which overlooks the city and then walked along the river, went to a wine tasting room and then had dinner on the river.

Pilot Butte, overlooking Bend and the surrounding area.

The river in Bend was full of kayakers, tubers, and paddleboarders.

Once again the flowers were beautiful!

Lots of geese in the river.

And now on to Crater Lake. We were all blown away by the views from the very first overlook we came across. The water is the most amazing color. Crater Lake is the deepest Lake in the United States. It is 1,943 feet deep and varies between 6.02 miles and 4.54 miles across. It holds 4.9 trillion gallons of water and is surrounded by cliffs from 507 feet high to 1,978 feet high so water access is very limited.

This is called Wizard Island.

This is called Phantom Ship Island. Notice the haze in the picture caused by smoke from three forest fires near Crater Lake. It was interesting to see the smoke from some of the fires and try to figure out how far away they were.

There were Golden Squirrels everywhere. At first we thought they were chipmunks but Patrick looked it up and they are called either Golden Squirrels or Golden Ground Squirrels. As you can see, they are accustomed to being fed and are not at all afraid of humans.

Our first day in the Park we drove around the rim trail and stopped at lots of overlooks. Most of the pictures above were taken from those overlooks. The next pictures are of random things that we found interesting from streams and waterfalls to strange trees and beautiful flowers, and snow on the ground in July!

I think these next few are from Vidae Falls which you can see from the Rim Road.

The Crater Lake Cafe & Gift Shop Building.

You can see some of the smoke from the forest fires here. At one point we could not see anything in this picture other than the railing and the trees. Wizard Island, the water and the rim on the other side were all completely obscured by the white smoke.

The Crater Lake Lodge which has a restaurant and a long balcony where you can order food and drinks and sit and enjoy the view. The evening we were planning on doing just that was the evening that the smoke completely blocked the lovely view so we ate inside to avoid the smoke.

Snow!

We drove to the end of Pinnacles Road in Crater NP and hiked the Pinnacles trail. Interesting formations.

There were many beautiful trails beside streams with fabulous waterfalls in the Crater Lake area so we spent one day exploring some of those trails. Here are a few of those pictures. I think this one was called Clearwater Falls.

And that's finally the end of our Crater Lake post. And we didn't even include pictures of the four of us kayaking on Diamond Lake. Crater Lake is a beautiful place and the temps were very moderate there so we all enjoyed our time in the area. Sometime soon I'll post pictures of our time in Portland. Until then, stay cool!