On our way out to Crater Lake, I discovered that this part of the wilderness doesn’t have fuel stations everywhere and had to turn the group back to the nearest station I could confirm. With about one gallon left in my tank, we refueled.
We passed by the Pinnacles on the entrance into Crater Lake National Park. These are fossilized fumaroles that look like great sandstone spires, almost cathedral-like, along the canyons into the park. The Rim Village gave us our first view of Crater Lake, a broad panorama that reveals the entirety of the caldera, Wizard Island and the surrounding snow-covered peaks. We were surprised by the amount of snow this late in June and that the Park hadn’t fully cleared the Rim Road that circles the lake. We stopped at Discovery Point to enjoy lunch and weren’t the only ones who found this overlook ideal for taking in the views. As we reminded the boys NOT to feed the chipmunks or Clark’s Nutcrackers, a guy down at the other end of the overlook unloaded half a bag of Cheetos to the birds.
After a 45 minute holdup waiting for crews to work on a massive rock slide that covered a substantial portion of the road, we continued on about 1,000 feet above the surface of Crater Lake. Although the Rim Road is a continuous loop around the entire lake, a large portion of it wasn’t yet cleared and we were blocked from going further at Cleetwood Cove. We parked and began the trek, described as ‘strenuous’ in the park brochure, down to the lake below. Only 1.1 miles down, it drops around 800 feet in elevation, with lots of switchbacks and loose gravel on the trail. And because it’s front loaded with the easy part (downhill hike first), you know you’re in for a doozy on the return. Once down at the Cleetwood Cove dock where usually boat tours start, we held up to watch a guy jump into the 40 degree water on a $20 bet. The hike back up wasn’t too bad as we’d started to build up our strength via hikes to Bumpass Hell and Cinder Cone. The real challenge was avoiding the herds of voracious mosquitoes that swarmed us multiple times.
On our way back toward camp, we stopped to look at the Pinnacles more closely – lit up golden in the late afternoon sun.
Back at camp, we walked Timber who took a long nap while we were at Crater Lake. He got a chance to dip his paws in the Spring Creek directly behind our campsite. For dinner we treated ourselves to steak, mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, mac & cheese, Scotch/wine for the grown ups and Double-Stuff Oreos for the kids (and for some of the grown ups too).
