Oregon at Last

Alicia and Erik had an open house in Oregon on July 2, so we decided to make a vacation of it and join them after we toured Oregon.  We left on Monday, June 27 and drove and drove and drove to Lakeview.

Tuesday

We planned to spend Tuesday at Crater Lake, a collapsed volcano.  I was so excited to see the incredible blue of the lake that makes it famous.  We had read about the beautiful wildflowers and thought we'd enjoy a picnic at an overlook.  This was our first indication that the day wasn't going to go exactly as planned.

SNOW!  We cancelled our hopes for a picnic.  Our second indicator that the day might go differently than planned was when the ranger at the gate said there was no visibility at the lake.  NO VISIBILITY!  It had never occurred to us that we might not be able to see the lake!  We traveled to the visitor's center and encountered MORE SNOW.  It was also raining quite fiercely.

We couldn't get into the front door of the visitor's center--it was still blocked by snow.  We went through the "snow tunnel" side door and watched a movie on snow removal.  I'm sure it's for disgruntled tourists who, like us, thought it was summer.  After stalling at the visitor's center for some time, we headed up the mountain to see what we could see.  This is what we saw.

 Even Alan has a jacket on, so you know its cold.  We thought maybe the view would be more clear at a higher elevation, so we journeyed on.  By now, it was not only raining, the winds had kicked up.  I hopped out of the car and quickly took this picture of the lake.

We had been traversing the west rim and decided to try the south rim of the lake.  The north and east rims were still impassable. Although it was posted to be open, the south rim had been closed.  We were about to leave the park when Alan suggested we go back to the first lookout and wait for the weather to clear.  Back we went, and as soon as we got there, the clouds lifted a tiny bit and we got these three pictures.

We still couldn't see the beautiful blue, but at least we could see Wizard Island and part of the lake. (Wizard Island was given its name because the person who named it thought it looked like a wizard's hat.)  We sat in the car and read No Ordinary Time for a half hour, but the weather refused to clear.  Having seen all we were going to see, we headed for a different world--the green shores of the Rogue River on the way to Grant's Pass.

Crater Lake was a great adventure, but we were happy to see green trees and blue skies again.  It wasn't until we reached our motel that we learned we would start adventure #2.  I had left my purse back in the motel in Lakeview.