Crater Lake National Park

A few weeks ago the family took an awesome trip to the west coast to see some National Parks and Monuments (and lots of other cool things).  Here is the first set of pictures I am going to post.

On Friday we visited Crater Lake National Park.  Let me start by saying that Crater Lake is not the most convenient place to visit.  It is pretty drive but not an easy one BUT it is totally worth it.

 We drove over to Crater Lake from Roseburg Oregon, where Luke and Marcus had a fun morning of visiting a wildlife safari.  I wasn't with but the pictures looked awesome.  The drive over took us about 2 hours and we stopped by a super cute lake (Diamond Lake) for lunch.  It was totally an old time resort and diner (it reminded me of the resort in Dirty Dancing, only that was on the East Coast).

The drive itself is pretty but it pretty much just feels like you are driving through a woods, for a long time.  The hills did get bigger and the elevation increased but it wasn't mind blowing beautiful.

We stopped at Diamond Lake, which was really the last stop before the park that had any food or gas options.  This lake is just a few miles from Crater Lake and it is a beautiful resort.  It was just getting busy for the memorial day weekend.  One thing that was kind of odd was the bugs that swarmed us.  They were called "Midge flies", I have learned since that time that the flies we actually saw were "Kalmath Midges".  We talked to a fisherman for a while and learned that the Midge Flies can ruin the time on the lake because they swarm and the fish eat them, leaving no interest to bite on fishing lines.

View from Diamon Lake Resort

So after we ate it was back on the road again and the scenery changed very quickly.  We started driving into SNOW!  I didn't expect that at all.  I had looked at some tourist books and checked out the national park website but none of them mentioned snow was a possibility.

 We learned that we were actually there on the 1st day that the north road (where we were driving in on) was open for the season.  We also learned that the entire road around the lake wasn't opened yet and wasn't expected to open until late June/ early July when the snow melts.

After entering the park one of the first things we came across was a barren dessert- No snow here! 
These are all Ashes from thousands of years ago.  Nothing grows here because the ash is up to 18" deep.

 Next we jumped back into the car and drove up the road to Crater Lake.  The elevation increased rapidly and we could easily see how deep the snow was from the winter.  The roads were busy but also in pretty good shape.

When we got to the first parking spot we were so excited to see the lake and it was amazing. 

Crater Lake is a lake that has no water coming into it or out of it.  The water that has accumulated in the crater over the years is all from the snow fall. 

The island in the middle is actually the middle of the volcano and it is called Wizard Island.  People can take a boat ride out there during the season (July - September) and hike on the island.  I think I am adding that to my bucket list.

We drove around the lake (the half of the loop that was open) and stopped and took lots of pictures.  We couldn't hike because there wasn't any trails open with the all snow.  Eventually we hit the lodge and the visitors center.



One last view of the lake!

One last cute and funny Marcus story.  Crater Lake was created when Mount Mazama, which was a volcano, blew up, taking the top of the mountain with it.  Marcus really loved the story and it took with him however he know refers to Crater Lake as the "broken mountain", so if he tells you about the broken mountain you now know what he is taking about.