Snow around Crater Lake
I haven’t been to Crater Lake yet this year, but it probably looks something like this and will for the next three or four months.
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Posts tagged crater lake
Crater Lake in May
Photos can’t capture the magnificence of Crater Lake. How can such an unnatural looking blue be so natural?
Wrapping up Crater Lake week
Here is one last image of Crater Lake for a while. I think I took this at or near Merriam Point on the west side of the Rim Drive.
Rim Drive
Rim Drive around Crater Lake offers many majestic views. Although the road is paved, it isn’t an easy ride. There can be lots of cars (avoid weekends and holidays), and there isn’t a flat section to be found. As a rider you’ll do lots of climbing.
Today’s photo of Ryan is of one of those brief downhill moments.
Crater Lake from the east shore
The skies were gray all day long, but they cleared a bit near the end of the day when I took this photo of Crater Lake from near Sentinel Rock. Unfortunately, my memory of this location is not a good one as our bikes had just been stolen. How can bikes you are riding get stolen you ask?
As mentioned before the day had its low points. The ride was about twice as long as anticipated and after 20 miles my legs began to cramp. A few miles later we hitched a ride and hid our bikes off the road with the intention of getting a ride to our car, driving our car back, and picking up the bikes. All went as planned until we got back and found the bikes missing. A dishonest someone must have seen us hiding the bikes. 🙁
The only silver lining is that my bike was in need of an overhaul anyway, and Ryan is getting too tall for his.
Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels of Crater Lake
These little chipmunk-looking squirrels are all over the place at Crater Lake. They will gladly eat right out of your hand should you want to share your lunch.
Cleetwood Cove
The Cleetwood Cove section of Crater Lake was much bluer than the rest. I have no idea why. I was surprised the lake was so blue on a day with mostly gray clouds. Count on a temperature much cooler than you may expect at Crater Lake. We were in the 60s most of the day even though I was expecting 70s. If you are biking it around the lake, 60s are fine for uphill portions (of which there are many on Rim Drive), but things got a little cold on the downhill stretches, even with two shirts.
Crater Lake week
Ryan and I went for a bike ride around Crater Lake this past Saturday. It was a day filled with many highs and many lows. I’ll share some of those, and some photos, over the coming week.
The first “low” was that the road is much longer than I anticipated. A friend told me it takes 2.5 hours on a bike, but we did not find that to be the case. Crater Lake is about 5 miles across. Using the old equation of πr2 (pie r squared) yields a circumference much smaller than the road that goes around the crater, which we found out after the fact is 36 miles in length. You are not actually on the rim of the crater for very long or in many places on the “Rim Road.” Usually you are on the outside of the rim, with just occasional glimpses of the beauty of the lake.
Crater Lake in May
For some, unknown reason our guide never took us to the lake. I think most of the kids didn’t even see Crater Lake on this Crater Lake field trip. I wasn’t going to miss it though. When you have traveled to one of the Top 10 Natural Wonders of the World you may as well look at it.
Crater Lake was in fine form on this day.
Klamath Basin from Crater Lake
For some unknown reason our showshoe guide took us away from Crater Lake. Sure the views were still fantastic, like the one above of the Klamath Basin, but I hadn’t seen Crater Lake in nearly ten years. I had never seen it with snow or with the wicked, cool blue and cloudy sky that was now appearing.
I was dying inside, wanting to break from my field trip group to see the lake. But I performed my fatherly and chaperone duties and stuck with the group. I hoped the weather wouldn’t change before getting to the lake. Stay tuned to see if it did…