Crater Lake and huckleberry pie

Click photo for slide show

As promised, we made a trek to Crater Lake today.  The entrance to the National Park is about 34 miles from our RV Park.  After a fuel stop in Prospect, we drove Daisy Mae to the lake.  Par for the course, I left my lifetime senior free pass to all national parks on my dresser in Dallas.  Oh, well! 

The lake roads are all open this time of year, but the area averages about 500 inches of snow every winter, and we did see patches of snow along the side of the road.  We had a wonderful time stopping at the viewpoints.  You will notice that there are not a lot of pictures of the lake itself.  It is tempting to take multiple pictures at every viewpoint, but once you realize that there is no way to actually capture the incredible, deep blue color of the water, it seems pointless to take more photos. Suffice to say, the lake is breathtaking.

What I did take pictures of were flora and fauna. Some examples are below:

Click photo for slide show

I am especially proud to have captured a photo of the rare and beautiful black-hooded chickadee, the last shot in the photo series. 

After we had circumnavigated the lake, we stopped at the inevitable gift shop.  The shop may have been inevitable, but the buying was not.  All of the merchandise looked like the same stuff we have seen in other national parks, only the names were changed to protect the innocent!

From the gift shop, we drove a short distance to Crater Lake Lodge.  The lodge is large and appears to have been updated recently. We were not able to see any of the rooms, but the slide show below will give you a feeling for the flavor of the lodge:

Click the photo for slide show.

On the drive back to the RV park, we stopped in Union Creek at Beckie's, famous for pies.  Jill has been having a hankering for huckleberry pie. (I, of course, was completely neutral on the subject!)  Again, we were not disappointed.  The pie was delicious, the crust was flaky and the ice cream was the perfect accompaniment.  A stop across the highway at the little resort store for salt, however, proved fruitless. 

As we continued on our way, we came across a sign to the Rogue River Natural Bridge.  This rock formation is the result of volcanic eruption creating lava tubes.  The river then routed itself through one of them. The river travels underground in a lava tube for about 200 feet.  Thus, the top of the lava tube became a natural bridge. Although it is difficult to do justice to flowing (nay, gushing) water in photos, I have included a few below.  The series is set up so that each picture is a little further downstream from the previous one. 

Click photo for slide show. 

In the series above you see the water gushing into the lava tube. Next is a shot of the top of the natural bridge, followed by the water gushing out of the tube at 335,000 gallons per minute.  The next photo shows a cave, which is apparently a lava tube with a blind end. And finally there is the tailrace of the whole lava tube/natural bridge/river phenomenon.  God sure must have had fun putting all of this stuff together. 

We returned to Sadie tired but delighted with all that we saw today.  Stay tuned for more.