Crater Lake

We were up early at the Rouge River Inn and had breakfast at the hotel with lots of Amish people from Ohio. Once out the door, we headed toward Crater Lake. It was a lovely ride through some more redwoods and alot of National Park land. As we entered the Crater Lake area and stopped at the guard station to pay, up ahead, a deer walked across the road with two little ons trailing behind her. We didn't see any other large wildlife in the park.

We climbed for a long time toward Crater Lake. It is right up in the mountain range. They said before it collapsed, it was a mile higher. Hard to imagine. The road was farily good, but on the mountain side, it frequently dropped away without guardrails for several thousand feet.

Once at the top, we could see the lake. The colors defy description. Several shades of blue and green with the sides of the crater reflecting in the water. It's the deepest lake in America and the sixth deepest in the world. Almost 6 miles across at its widest point, the water is clear to 114 feet. It's 6,200 feet above sea level and we had views of Mt. Shasta in the distance. There was still banks of snow two or three feet deep! At the turnouts, kids an dogs couldn't resist walking on the snow. We road the rim loop around the volcano.

After we left the park, we headed toward Klamath Falls where we were picking the Coast Starlight at 10pm. We were there kinda early, so we had lunch downtown and saw a movie. Klamath Falls is kinda the Lewiston/Auburn of Oregon I think. It's larger than I thought it would be, with an older downtown and a very spread out rest of the area. We drove around in it enough finding the airport and then the train station that I can probably give directions now, which I'm sure will come in useful someday.

The train was on time and we were greeted by the attendent with personal bottles of champange. The room was already made up for bed, so we tucked in for the night.

---

---