Day 107, Septermber 22, 2010

Just a quick note, as we are preparing to leave this lovely campground in Diamond Lake, which is private, therefore expensive, for an equally lovely one in Crater National Park.  We may not be able to get one of the only 10 sites there with electric, so we will be out of reach for a few days again.

We drove the Rim Road around Crater Lake yesterday.  Every corner yielded a new and more beautiful view of the lake and the incredible cliffs that surround it.  I took many, many pictures; too many, probably.  We also stopped at the Visitor's Center (all of those Centers in every park are well worth the stop), and watched a video.

We've enjoyed the videos in each of the National Parks, but this one was especially fine.  It blended the history/geology of Crater Lake with the local Klamath Indian legends about the beginnings of the Lake.  We also saw a brief video of the road crew clearing the snow from Rim Road each spring.  It takes them almost 4 months to completely clear the roads around the lake; they only get about 1/4 mile cleared a day!  When you think that the average snowfall on the Rim Road is 40 feet deep, it is understandable.

It was hair-raising to see those big bulldozers clearning the edges of the road, which they could not see, with the 500-1000-foot drop-offs.  There is some kind of cable running around the edge of the road that an electronic device in each bulldozer "reads" and that helps.  But it is still one of the most hazardous jobs in any of the National Parks.

Oh, and I learned that Crater Lake is NOT a volcanic crater.  A crater appears when the top blows off the mountain.  Crater Lake is a Caldera, which develops when the magma is depleted during many eruptions, and the top of the mountain SINKS down.  One of the interesting features of the area is the Pumice desert, created by the last eruption, 7,000 years ago.  Trees are still very sparse, and only some grasses and little plants grow there.

We didn't see the Phantom Ship, which is a 40-foot tree, floating VERTICALLY around the lake.  No one knows why it floats vertically, but it was first sighted 100 years ago!  Amazing!

Off to "button-up" for our hair-raising trip on Rim Road with the coach, on the way to our new home for several nights.  We will be dry-camping again.  Snuggles sends her best bark.