Great Basin National Park

We arrived at Crater Lake following a 2-day, 790 mile sprint across ID from Yellowstone.  The sprint was highlighted by a wonderful visit with family friends in Sun Valley.  A visit that included our first non-RV night since Nashville.  I will wax poetic about the friends and their water pressure in a subsequent post!

We would have tried our luck at a first come, first serve RV spot in the park itself, but best we could tell ahead of time, CL isn’t really set up for mammoth RV’s like ours.  Unlike Yellowstone, we only saw one RV during our trip inside the park itself.  One look over the “rim” of the crater was enough to satisfy us that we made the right call leaving the RV in an RV park outside CL.  The sheer drop offs were scary enough in a tiny Ford Focus – they would have been terrifying in top heavy Moby.

Crater Lake is located in south central Oregon – the drive here was another one of those desolate affairs through high desert with signs cautioning that the next “service area” was 68 miles away.  Read…”breakdown here and you are likely to perish before rescue arrives – um, never mind about the rescue your cell phone doesn’t work anyway.”  This is Hammond territory if that means anything to you.  Google Hammond and BLM if you want the cliff notes.   During our overnight in the tiny town of Burn’s, the political fires were still burning with local establishments bearing signs like “we stand with the Hammonds.” 

When we finally made it out of the high plains, we were greeted by the Deschutes and Winema National Forests – our first glimpse of classic Oregon.  Tall pines, meandering rivers, cows grazing in the valleys.  We stayed in a small RV park that was “cozy” (read 4 feet from your neighbor) but pretty and quiet with a little clear creek running behind our site.

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US and one of the top 10+ deepest lakes in the world.  About 1,900 feet deep.  It was formed when Mt. Mazama erupted and basically fell in on itself forming a giant crater that slowly filled with rainwater and snow melt.  The result is an exceptionally clear, clean lake that is an indescribable blue.  The photos don’t do the color justice.  It alternates between deepest sapphire to a shade reminiscent of cornflowers. But again, language fails to capture the color, beauty and clarity of the lake.  We spent a very full day in CL starting with a 2 mile roundtrip hike up Watchman’s peak – the site of a fire tower still in use.  The view from Watchman’s was breathtaking.  Then we did a short 3 mile wildflower trail before taking a break for lunch. Along the way we picked up a hitchhiker in the park.  The park encompasses the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) and there were several such hikers in need of a lift from the trail to the visitors center for a much needed shower (luckily our hiker had already had his shower 😉). He crammed in the back with the girls and we shared 10 mins of information along the way.  He was a product designer on sabbatical from Silicon Valley about half way along his 2,600 mile journey along the PCT.

The afternoon was a boat ride around the perimeter of the lake.  It was a bit of a splurge, but Hazel (in charge of our entertainment budget) was in hearty agreement that the boat ride was worth the investment!  After the boat trip we hiked back to the rim (700 feet straight up on a series of 9 switchbacks) and headed to CL lodge for sustenance.  I am still kicking myself for not getting any photos of the lodge.  Thus far it is my favorite.  Bryce Lodge was fun in a campy sort of way and had that warm pine smell I love.  Yellowstone Inn was drop dead beautiful but so packed it was a little hard to fully appreciate.  But Crater Lake Lodge was just perfect.  It was smaller than the others with a wood paneled lobby – sort of a cross between a classy western ski lodge and an English pub.  The paneling was partly done with pine logs retaining their bark and was set off by gleaming wood floors, massive stone fireplaces, Mission furniture – and a deck that looked over the rim of the lake itself.  If I revisit CL I will try to stay in the lodge in late September before it closes and hope for an early snow.  As Ava said a great place to hole up and read a book interspersed with rim hikes on foot or cross-country ski.

Sorry to leave CR so soon but so excited to reach Redwood later today – and the Pacific Ocean.  We will have effectively crossed the country in 6 weeks!