We've been slowly working our way through a set of PBS documentaries by Ken Burns, called The National Parks -- America's Best Idea. They're really informative and most of the imagery is incredible. The story is a little slow and repetitive, though. One of the quotes, however, seem to apply very much to our trip. "Every park you visit seems to be better than the last!" It certainly seems that way to us :-)
This post is dedicated to our latest, Oregon's Crater Lake National Park.
Crater Lake is a rich, deep, perfectly blue body of fresh water formed by thousands of years of snow fall and snow melt filling the bowl of an exploded, dormant volcano. The lake has no inlets or outlets for the water, so the color of the water is quite unique. The size, too, is remarkable. The perimeter around the crater is 33 miles, which puts the diameter at over 5 miles across. The water is well over 2000 feet deep. The maximum depth is actually still a mystery.
We drove the entire perimeter, stopping at most of the 30+ roadside views, taking hundreds of remarkable pictures and taking in even more breathtaking views. In most places, the rim (and consequently, the road) is over 1,000 feet higher than the water's surface.
Here is Kim's first glance of the lake. She had never heard of it, so she had no idea what to expect. I'm pretty sure her first views of the lake were breathtaking (as were mine).
We'll show you some pictures here, but it's very difficult for us to explain, and possibly hard for you to wrap your head around this spectacular anomaly of nature! This is the color of the water, a deep, flawless blue that is positively entrancing.
This scale doesn't do it justice. The cliffs you see on the far side are over 5 miles away.
The natural colors of the stone, water, trees, and sky can just melt your mind. The scale of the rocks and structures in the lake are almost imperceptible. I had to take lots of panoramic shots.
There weren't many guardrails. The ledges were quite steep, and their were rock slides all around.
The "island" you see in the foreground is actually another smaller, younger volcano that has sprung up from within the lake itself.
The water was actually quite still. Coupled with the clear blue skies and natural light, these reflections were amazing.
We saw a few critters in the park, mostly chipmunks. They were quite cute, and fat.
As for our lunch, we made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and had a picnic at a roadside stop overlooking the phantom pirate ship.
The rocky structure you see in the middle of this frame is know as "Phantom Ship". It's an odd crag near one shoreline within the lake. It has a number of spires which, I believe, are fumaroles similar to ones we saw in Yellowstone. It's thought to look like a pirate ship sailing in the lake.
What's hard to believe is that this island's peak is 160 feet higher than the surface area of the water (that's equivalent to a 16-story building), and its walls descend over a thousand feet to the bottom of the lake floor. You can see some huge pine trees growing on the island that merely look like twigs.
We had hoped for a good portrait of the two of us in front of the lake. This is the best we got. Hint: tweak the brightness/contrast, and make it black-and-white. The Phantom Ship is the island on the far left of the frame.
This was perhaps the most intriguing story we found on any of the roadside placards. There's a 35-foot tall tree stump that has been floating in the lake since at least 1929. We spent a few minutes looking for it, but didn't spot it.
Then, at our next stop, with a pair of binoculars, we found it! Can you spot it in this photo? (You might need to click on it to get a hi-res image...)
Here it is, at 36x amplification!
We had fun focusing our eyes on the water itself. With the reflection of the clouds, it very much looked like the sky. Some Native American tribes thought it sacrilegious to even look at the waters of Crater Lake. 
Once we finished the entire loop, we left the park, heading south and west for a gorgeous drive through the Cascades, toward the coast.
We had a fabulous day enjoying the quiet volcano and perhaps America's most beautiful lake. Central Oregon seems to have a lot of natural beauty to offer. I certainly hope to return again soon, and perhaps go climbing again at Smith Rock!
:-Dustin
Absolutely gorgeous1
ReplyDelete