We left Portland and Multnomah Falls and headed south towards Crater Lake National Park. I was really excited for Crater Lake, and I can tell you now, it definitely did not disappoint!
We took the scenic route and tried to avoid the I-5 as much as possible. The road was pretty quiet and we got to see Mt. Hood and lots of forest. It was a pretty long drive, though.
We ended up arriving at the park at golden hour, so we got to at least see some of the park on the way to the campsite.
We had a pretty relaxed evening, because we were all tired from the drive. We woke up at our lovely campsite, surrounded by trees! It was such a beautiful day to explore the park.
The first thing we did was stop at Sun Notch. This was our first view of the lake in full sunlight. There was a little bit of a walk and we saw some deer!
Then we got our first view of the lake! The water was so blue. That’s all we could say, really. So much blue! We also got a view of Phantom Ship, which is that cool rock formation in the water.
The contrast of the blue from the sky and the water and the bright green trees was just incredible.
We then started driving around the park counterclockwise and stopping at all the overlooks.
We took a detour to the southeast edge of the park to see the Pinnacles. You have to drive for quite a ways and then there’s a really short train where you can see the pinnacles. It’s a really cool formation, but we didn’t stay long. The lake was just so enticing!
We got back on the road that goes around the rim of the crater and kept stopping to overlook the lake.
We found out that there was only one place to walk down to the shore of the lake. The trail is called the Cleetwood Cove Trail and it takes you down to where you get the boat to Wizard Island but there’s also a rocky shore where you can go swimming.
It’s a pretty steep climb. Going down wasn’t too hard, but it made us dread going back up! We eventually made it down to the water.
There were quite a few people swimming, so we joined them.
Because there are no creeks or anything flowing into the lake, the only source of water for the lake is snowmelt. The annual snowfall at Crater Lake is 43 FEET! According to the park website, the maximum temperature for the surface water during the summer is 60F (which is just under 16 degrees Celcius). I can confirm that the water was super cold.
We were really lucky that it was hot that day, so we were able to swim for quite a while, knowing we could lay on the rocks in the sun and warm up pretty quickly.
Because the water is so pure, it’s bright blue and you can see down into the blue abyss for what seems like forever! It’s actually kind of scary. The lake is almost 2,000 feet deep and there are no fish or anything, so it’s just blue and nothing else. It definitely feels like there’s a huge lake monster lurking down there somewhere.
Eventually, we did have to get out when our toes went numb. We brought our sandwiches down with us to eat lunch after our swim. I’m so glad we brought food, because the hike up was exhausting. If we had been hungry, I’m not sure we would have made it up!
At the top, we changed back into our land clothes and kept driving around the lake.
After driving almost all the way around, we visited the lodge and the Rim Valley Visitor Center. After getting up so early and swimming, we were all pretty exhausted. We headed back to the campsite to read, rest, and relax. We had dinner and a pretty nice evening. Crater Lake was one of the nicest places we visited, I think. I noticed on this trip, anywhere we could go swimming was automatically rated much more highly, especially since the places we stayed often didn’t have showers, so we felt more clean at those places!
Unfortunately, the next morning we had to head on. It was our last day in Oregon, but the rest of the trip would be in California!
