2nd Day: Crater Lake {5th Anniversary Trip} 08.2007

Saturday August 11th 2007
We drove down towards Crater Lake. We stopped at a beautiful water fall, called Tumalo Falls. Then we drove on, saw some gorgeous scenery--mountains, cool lava flows. We got to Crater Lake, and ate lunch. We then went and looked at Crater Lake. It was absolutely magnificent. It's huge lake (5 miles across), with royal blue waters, and surrounded by huge mountains and cliffs that used to be part of Mt. Mazama, before it below it’s top nearly 8,000 years ago, and the crater filled up with water (which is now Crater Lake). It is the deepest lake in the United States, at nearly 2,000 feet deep and one of the deepest in the world. It’s amazing because the water absorbs all of the colors, except for this amazing royal blue color, that is why it is so blue (also why the sky is blue—because it absorbs all of the other colors). The volcano started to use it’s lava and re-grow, it’s cone (which is what most volcanoes do—including what Mt. St. Helens is doing right now), which is now an island—Wizard Island. The mountain, hasn’t grown for several thousand years, so there is vegetation growing on the island, and it is considered to be an extinct volcano. There is also part of the magma that grew up on one side of the lake, and it looks like a ship from far away, it’s named the Phantom Ship. It’s pretty cool. The biggest mountain, (that is right off of Crater Lake), now is Mount Scott. But the original Mt. Mazama, was expected to be ginormous, that would have been a site to see. We saw many beautiful things around Crater Lake, including Vidae Falls, and the Pinnacles, which are these tall spheres of hardened magma that had grown out of the ground from the volcanic activity, they almost look like sand castles, the way that they are arranged. There is a lot of beautiful scenery. We climbed a mountain (combined there and back trip of 1.5 miles straight up) trail to the “watchman’s tower” and it has such an amazing views from up there--mountain ranges and beautiful vegetation and views from all sides, and of course a great view of Crater Lake. because it We talked to the kids and Ethan said, "Mommy and Daddy, you come to Grandma and Grandpa's right now?" They missed us. We couldn't find a hotel/motel with any vacancy from Crater Lake to the Bend area, so we decided to use our camping gear (that we had). We drove to the National Forest to camp. We found a cute little camping spot. And we had a to turn on our car’s headlights to set up the tent (it was 10 pm at night) and we had forgotten flashlights. We got in our sleeping bags and gazed at the stars through the top of our Star Gazer tent (we had the rain-fly off). The sky was amazing and clear and we could see everything. Mark and I had fun snuggling and talking. It was a gorgeous night. I was sooo tired, I fell asleep in like 10 minutes, but before I did, I saw like 7 shooting stars (it must have been a meteor shower!).