July 19, 2012
Our first full day at Crater Lake dawns sunny and mostly clear...and actually not as cold as we thought it might be. The colors are just starting to appear and already they make us pause...
We head down to the lobby where the coffee is served beginning at 6:30am...even though we are surrounded by natural beauty that inspires us and enriches our souls, we still need our caffeine! As we enjoy our morning cup of joe, we meet John who is from Kansas City, Kansas...we have a nice chat until John moves on...we head to breakfast in the dining room, hoping to get one of the good tables with a view.
Despite our early arrival, we don't get lucky enough to get one of the three prime tables, but we get a good alternate...one in the corner with two windows that look out to the south and east...so we can see the meadow beyond the lodge in the early morning sunlight. The meadow beyond the entrance of the lodge used to be (way back when) a camping area...but not any longer. Now campers stay down the hill in a campground called Mazama.
We have our plan for the day...we will be taking the Crater Lake tour boat at 10:30 so we're leaving plenty of time to drive half way around the rim of Crater Lake to Cleetwood Cove where the tour boat departs. We start with a picture from the lodge and we will be stopping at most of the viewpoints around the rim of the lake to take photos to get the full 360 degree perspective.
Our drive will take us clockwise around Crater Lake...a full 33 miles...starting from the south end (roughly the 7 o'clock position) and ending up back at the lodge later this afternoon. As we make our way around to the western rim of the lake we get the rising sun shimmering on the waters and casting Wizard Island as a dark silhouette. That's Mount Scott in the background, which is the highest point in the Crater Lake National Park at 8,929 feet.
This section of the rim road is only open in the summer time and affords us a nice view back toward the lodge in a section of the rim called Discovery Point...
A few miles farther and we're on the west side of the rim looking east...which gives us a view of the side of Wizard Island and Skell Channel which is the narrow passage between the caldera edge and the arm of Wizard Island the reaches toward land...
The next few miles of rim road take us away from the lake and we get views of the park's western and northwestern region. It's a nice clear morning so we can see for miles and get some great photos of Union Peak (on the right) and Mount McLaughlin (center).
The rim road brings us back to the edge of Crater Lake and we have a view across to the south...we see the other side of Wizard Island. The Crater Lake Lodge is just about at the center of this picture (but very small) and the two peaks that lie to left of center are Garfield and Applegate peaks...you can hike the Garfield Peak trail from the lodge!
Looking a little further to the southeast, we have a great view of the Sun Notch, which is the large saddle to the left of Applegate Peak...
Now, as you may have seen in other posts, we love to take photos of the geological markers we find along the way. This marker is not the same as others we have seen and photographed, it is placed by the USDA Bureau of Public Roads...haven't seen one of these before, but it explains why there is no elevation given...
Patty is tired of sitting and riding...she wants to move, move, move! So she runs uphill to the next viewpoint...
We're almost halfway around the lake, we're at about the 11 o'clock position and getting close to the trailhead that will take us down to lake level and our tour boat. We get another angle of Wizard Island, and Patty decides to stick her finger into the little crater on the island's cone to see what's inside. She reports that there is still snow inside...
We make it to Cleetwood Cove in plenty of time for our 10:30 cruise of the lake...we park and head to the trailhead. Because the cruise was so picturesque and so interesting, we have made it into a separate blog entry...so be sure to check it out!
After the cruise, we decide it is time for lunch. One thing that we really enjoy when we're Roadtreking is to stop at a scenic place, kick open the side doors, and have a relaxing lunch with a view. If only we could find a decent view somewhere around the rim of this lake....how's this spot? Looks good, so we stop for lunch...(we're at about the one o'clock position on the rim, and it's about one o'clock...how about that for synchronicity...!).
After lunch, we continue on around the rim of Crater Lake. We are about the farthest away from Wizard Island we can get on the rim...Looking down at the surface of the lake, we see the yellow veil-like line of pine pollen...the wind blows the pollen from the trees, it lands on the surface of the lake, and the wind patterns create these yellow lines that are so vibrant against the lapis colored water...
Now that we're getting around to the east side of the rim, we can look back at what we missed when the rim road took us away from the lake. This is Llao Rock, which is named for one of the gods of the local Indian tribes...it is a massive rock and the rim road goes around it rather than over it or through it...now that we can see it we understand why we had to drive around it...it is over 8,000 feet high, and one side is a sheer cliff to the water!
Our drive continues and takes us to a viewpoint near Skell Head. From here we can take a look back to the north and see the Grotto Cove, with Palisade Point all the way at the far end (on the left...more about the Palisades portion of the rim in our lake cruise post...) and we decide to take it all in (or try) with a panorama photo...
Again the rim road takes us away from the edge of the lake, but affords us views of the mountains in the distance...here she is again, South Sister...
Along the spur road to Cloudcap Overlook we see an indication of just how much snow this area gets in the winter. Remember, it is late July and the snow along the roadside is still 10 feet high...! Most of Rim Drive is closed from mid-September until mid-June...and it's possible some of this snow will still be here when the next snows fall!
We're now in the southeast quadrant of the rim and we're getting great views of the lake that are otherwise too distant from the location of the lodge. We get our first glimpse of Phantom Ship, a fascinating little rock formation in the lake.
On this side of the park, there are a series of buttes that rise up like tilted plateaus from the surrounding landscape to elevations of 6,000 feet... yet another form of geological upheaval that has gone on in this area...
Cloudcap Overlook sits at the three o'clock position on the rim of the lake and is the highest point on the Rim Drive at 7,865 feet of elevation. From here you get to look down (as much as possible) on the rim and the lake. There are boards at this overlook that give an explanation of the view as well as the climate of the Crater Lake caldera. In this photo we a now looking almost straight west...a little south but mostly west...
On the spur road back from Cloudcap Overlook we see a patch of pumice desert...these are scattered throughout the park on the outside of the rim of the caldera...these are areas in which the pumice from the eruption of Mount Mazama accumulated and the small pellets of pumice are not very hospitable to trees or plants...
Our next stop around the rim is Phamtom Ship Overlook...named, obviously, for the great view of Phantom Ship you get from here. We got an up-close and personal look at Phantom Ship on our boat cruise, so we'll give a few more details in that post...
From the Phantom Ship Overlook we have two choices...head back to the lodge, or take Pinnacles Road about seven miles to see...well, the Pinnacles of course! So we decide to take it all in and head to see the pinnacles.
The Pinnacles are an extraordinary phenomenon...they are the result of the eruption of Mount Mazama but in a different way than what we have seen along the rim of the caldera. At this more distant location, the mountain rained down hot and gassy pumice, then glowing rocks. The really REALLY hot gas in the pumice layer forced its way up to the surface and it literally welded the minerals in the rocks together to create fossils of the tall thin vents. Now you know what formed these pinnacles!
The result is this area filled with concrete-colored spires sticking out of slopes of pumice. For us, it is vaguely reminiscent of Bryce Canyon and it's hoodoos (though on a much smaller scale...and not as colorful).
The path in to see the pinnacles is only a mile long, pretty flat, and actually takes us to the original entrance to the pinnacles area and the Crater Lake Park Boundary
Along the path there are various outcroppings that afford nice views of the pinnacles...it is so interesting to see these gray spires emerging from the tan pumice of the slopes...
This really gives you a sense of the formation, and also the fact that we're probably walking across the tops of spires that will some day be exposed by further erosion...
At the end of the Pinnacles Trail we reach what was once the official entrance to the park from the southeast corner where it abuts the Winema National Forest. The entrance must have been one of those grand old stone and timber gateways that we have seen at so many national parks...but this one has seen better days...
One column remains, and holds on to the end of a timber that used to span the entrance as a grand gateway...and the fallen column lies on the far side, now just a pile of carefully hewn rocks being steadily overgrown by the forest...
And if we take one more step, we'll be out of the park...
The drive back takes us away from the rim of the lake and through the forest that surrounds the caldera. We pass the back side of the Sun Notch we saw earlier from the Rim Drive, and pass the turn off for the campgrounds in Mazama Village. A bit of a twisting and turning uphill drive takes us past the Crater Lake National Park headquarters and eventually gets us back to Rim Village and the Lodge.
It has been a great day, examining Crater Lake from the entirety of the Rim Drive, and we take one last look at the lake with the evening cruise boat making its circuit.
Tonight we again have dinner in the dining room, and we've saved room for dessert...berry cobbler...with vanilla bean ice cream...oh, that's good...! The folks at the table next to us notice us taking pictures and offer to take one of the two of us...you meet the nicest folks at national parks...
Remember to check out our separate post about the Crater Lake boat tour...if we had included it in this post you surely would have given up reading by now...!
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SO BEAUTIFUL!!!
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