A Most Unusal Trip- Crater Lake June 29, 2011

Click on pictures to enlarge. Each adventure should start with a trip to Lion's Mountain bakery to see what is happening. I had a blueberry scone with orange peel added

Our intent was to head up to Waldo Lake up the road apiece.  It is said to be one of the cleanest and purest lakes in the USA, so clean in fact that you can see 125 feet into the lake on a good day.  We took our exit and about 4 miles up the road ran into a roadblock of sort; it evidently was not a good day to see the lake..  So, we turned around, went back the mountain to another lake.

There are a bunch of lakes in this area.  This is known as Odell Lake.

We went into the little camp store there to refresh our coffee and get some ideas about hiking trails in the area.  The kind lady looked at us, and asked, "well, did you bring bug spray?".  No we hadn't seeing it was 50ish out and we are up north, right?

So , we detoured and drove an extra 60 miles to see Crater Lake National Park.  At the entrance to Crater Lake lies a pumice desert,  a result from the volcano eruption. Hardly any trees grow in this area due to lack of nutrients.  They get plenty of water; the volcano byproducts just altered the soil so much only a few trees grow.

A mile into the park, we see that we probably won't be walking any of the trails here.

Low clouds begin to move in, rain sprinkles begin to fall, the temp is dropping as we climb.  At this point, we are hoping that the sun will still come out so we can at least see something--we are optimists.

The visitor's center was packed with people, so we weren't the only ones.

wise advice

from inside the restroom at visitor's center- note no escape route.

I bet it is pretty on a perfect day...the postcards in the visitor's center were breathtaking.  But at least we got a peak for five min. and the sun did come out a little bit at least.

The park ranger at the entrance.  We had a hard time trying to figure out why she wore that netting...mosquitos in 40 degree temps and snow on the ground????  But they were everywhere, people rolled down their windows to pay the entrance fee and were swinging left and right. 

As we leave the park and drop in elevation, this is what the weather was like. Oregon has strange weather!