The Wood Between the Worlds

...Or family vaycay, day 1:
7/19/2011
This year we decided to take a bigger vacation than last year but were hoping to take some time to explore the Northwest...because we're always a little nervous that we might be moving away someday (not that we have a move planned!).  At first we were planning on heading to the North Cascade National Park in Washington, a little jaunt through Seattle, a ferry ride to the San Juan Islands, etc.  But as the time grew near, the forecast up north was cold and rain.  UGH!  NO!  There was NO WAY we were going to let cold rain interfere with our vacation again.  So we quickly changed our plans to head south instead...to Crater Lake, Grants Pass, the highway that connects Oregon to the California Redwoods, and then up the south coast of Oregon (which has been neglected in all of our coast excursions).  But this post is only going to be about Crater Lake.  Because Crater Lake is very worthy of its own post!

Crater Lake Nation Park.
A place on our travel agenda for a few years.  A place well worth the visit!  Crater Lake is inside the caldera of an ancient volcano, Mt. Mazama.  A looooong time ago this ginormous volcano blew the top half of the mountain off and the giant crater that was left slowly filled with snow melt and rain water.  There are no other water sources for Crater Lake.  I'm going to venture an educated guess and say that the lake is so blue because of the glacial melt depositing minerals in the lake.  When we went to Alaska we learned that the water was so blue there because of this reason.  

When we got to the booth where you pay to get into the park at the bottom of the mountain, the ranger told us there was no visibility.  We would not be able to see the Lake because of the cloud cover.  Our hearts sank.  The ranger asked us if we still wanted to go it (as it costs $20 or so).  We asked if the trail was open to hike from the top of the caldera to the shore of the lake.  He said yes, but warned us of snow.  I did NOT want to hike in the snow (we were not prepared), but we drove five hours to come  and see this, so we gave decided to give it a shot!  Oh how I wanted to go and EXPERIENCE Crater Lake, and NOT in the snow.  We drove along the road and stopped at a lookout:

THANKFULLY the clouds were blowing off.

RAIN on the lens!

SO HAPPY that the clouds blew off!!!

 Then we each took a turn *touching* crater lake.  It was COLD!





 After the hike, we drove around to the other side of the lake where the lodge and visitors center are.  We took a quick tour of the visitors center and saw the view from the other side of the lake.









 And then on our drive out of the park, we stopped to show the boys that a Ponderosa Pine tree smells like butterscotch.  They have never smelled one before because they don't grow up here near Portland.