Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
June 21st 2018
Crater lake and Diamond lake.
As Crater lake is a fairly small park ( 33 miles circumference) it is easy to do in a few hours, so we could afford a later start than the last couple of days
Crater lake, is an old volcano, whose caldera collapsed in 7,700 years ago and a lake formed.
It is approximately 2000 feet deep at the deepest point and is the deepest lake in the USA, and the 6th deepest in the world.
The walls of the caldera rise 1000 feet above the lake and there is a road around the whole thing ( remember 33 miles, I told you earlier!)
We set off around it in a clockwise direction, stopping off at many of the vantage points along the way to get a good view of the deep blue lake below us.
The weather was warm and the waters were turquoise and ultraviolet in places and really clear. There was still some snow in places, and the park and ranger activities don’t official start until the 22nd ( but we will be gone)
The waters are made up of snow melt and rain only, so are some of the clearest of any lake.
In fact you can see down to about 125 feet it is so clear.
At one stopping point, we came across a little golden ground squirrel ( which looked like a chipmunk) who was happy to take food from you hand
We ended up at the rim village, a visitor centre and a hotel.
We had some nice sandwiches on the veranda of the cafe before finishing our tour of the park.(a full circuit)
We headed back to Diamond lake, as we wanted to hire a boat for the afternoon.
They had a selection of double pontoon boats available, so we first headed back to camp to get a picnic, drinks and camping chairs and table to take with us, and Nate was coming too, his first nautical trip!
Once we had driven back to the lake, we secured our boat for the rest of the day ( we had to be back by 8.30pm)
We loaded all our gear and set off, with me driving.
We headed around the edge of the lake to the far side, hoping we might see some wildlife.
We dropped anchor on the far side of the lake and ate, drank and chatted the hours away.
We did see a bald eagle circling above, but no other wildlife apart from some fish and ducks.
We started to head back about 7pm, as it had started to get windy and the lake surface a little choppy.
As we made our way back, poor Nate was looking for somewhere to pee, but you could see he didn’t want to do it in the boat.
(I should explain, these boats have very straight sides about 3 feet high with a little opening door at the front, with a cover over the top and clear soft vinyl sides, and the deck was covered in AstroTurf.)
Eventually, he started to wee up the little door, but asked luck would have it, we hit a bump and the door flew open and some water rushed in, and Nate rushed to the back of the boat, stopping mid pee, poor dog.
We shut the door and everyone moved back a way to raise the the bow a little to stop it happening again.
Nate eventually finished his wee, up the steering consul I was driving at, which we we all laughed at, and he went on for ages as he must have been holding it in, poor thing.
It didn’t really matter as the AstroTurf was already wet from the lake water.
We got back to the dock without further issue, packed our gear into the truck and drove the short distance back to the park.
After some drinks and snacks, whilst watching Denmark vs Australia in the World Cup, we turned in for the night.
Tomorrow we have a 2-3 hour journey to the coast of Oregon, to our new camp site for one day.
We are also catching up with Andy and Teresa who are coming up from California.
*note- should be able to load the blog up from tomorrow, as I should have WiFi and network once we get out of the forest area and get to the coast, which is good as I have loads of pics to upload also.
- comments