Magnificent Crater Lake, Oregon

 

Magnificent Crater Lake, Oregon

I must confess that before I bought my guidebook, I don’t think I had ever even heard of Crater Lake. But the guidebook highly recommended it, so I was interested. With just one week in Oregon (having never been there before) we didn’t know if we’d be able to squeeze it in…we knew we wanted to spend at least a day or so in Portland, do the Columbia River Gorge, and see the southern coast. How would we also fit in Crater Lake?

Well, fortunatley for us, we are very ambitious travelers and we did manage to fit it in and I must say it was the highlight of the trip!! Not only that, but it was one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen on this earth!!! It now ranks up there with some of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen (alongside the Grand Canyon, southern Utah, the Na Pali Coast in Kauai, Alaska, Iguazu Falls, New Zealand, the Amalfi Coast and Ireland).

It is like nothing we’d ever seen. The book tries to prepare you for the blue color of the water, but you will still be amazed at how blue it is, deep, sapphire blue, spectacularly blue!

Crater Lake National Park is kind of secluded in that it is a good 90 minute drive to any decent sized towns. But we easily saw it in one day, driving from Oakridge (north of Crater Lake).

We were there on July 15 and were told that the Rim Drive only opened the day BEFORE (because of snow)!! Keep this in mind if you plan a trip next summer. You can still get to the Lodge and a scenic viewpoint, but it’s really all about the drive (33 miles around the whole crater with tons of viewpoints and a couple of little trails and some hikes).

We had planned on doing a hike up Mt. Scott, but the ranger told us that it had been reported the day before that there was ALOT of snow on it. We didn’t feel fully prepared for that, so unfortunatley we decided to skip it. One other disappointment we had was the boat trip (or the fact that we didn’t get to take it).

There is a 2 hour boatride on the lake that you need to buy tickets for FIRST thing in the morning. The ranger told me we could just get tickets when we got there (which is about 3/4 of the way around the rim). They run every hour til 4pm and we got there about 1pm and were told that there were completely sold out. But we did hike down to the the lake anyway…it’s worth it just for the different perspective and a COOL dip if your up for it. Don’t forget that after you walk DOWN to the lake, you have to walk back up…it’s 1,000 feet, not hard if you’re a hiker (took us about 15-20 minutes). We did notice some people having a hard time.

So, for time planning, we made all the stops on the drive, the detour out to “The Pinnacles” (not worth the extra 14 miles roundtrip in our opinion), the very short Sun Notch trail, the Cleetwood Trail (down to the lake) and spent LOTS of time taking pictures and we were back at the Lodge by about 4pm.

We wished we would’ve had more time, (we would’ve liked to do the hike to the Watchman), but we were spending the night near Medford and needed to get going.

If we did it again, we would definitely spend the night at the lodge so that we’d have more time for hikes and the boat. The location of the lodge is spectacular! They have a porch with lots of rocking chairs and I could just sit there for HOURS and stare at that magnificent view!!

I can’t say enough about this beautiful place…if you’re thinking about going….GO, JUST GO!