Tom's National Park Adventure

It was bound to happen sooner or later. I didn’t want to bring it up for fear of jinxing my incredibly good luck. Rain, Rain and more Rain!

My day started just a little before 7:00am this morning. I got out and on the road and then the rain started. The rain stayed with me all almost all the way north out of California. The rain broke and I had a few minutes of almost blue skies. Then the state of Oregon welcomed me with a big sign and a very steep uphill climb. The fog came with it too! It was really thick fog. Not much fun to drive in, that’s for sure.

Logan called me right about then and was a good distraction while I was eating up highway miles.

I finally made it to my Campground and set up my camper.

After I finished setting up my camp I headed directly to the Crater Lake National Park. The park is about 20 miles from my campground. This is the only park that I wasn’t able to get a reservation inside the park. The campground I did get is fairly close and it is a National Forest campground.

While driving today, I asked myself what do you think you know about Crater Lake. The answer was “not very much”. I was thinking possibly that the lake was the result of a Meteor strike. I had no idea and wasn’t even remotely close!

Here is the Cliff notes version of how Crater Lake came to be. About 400,000 years ago reoccurring volcanic eruptions created 12,000 foot Mount Mazama. About 7,000 years ago a massive eruption sent pumice and ash toward the sky. Subsequently additional vents started to form around the mountain top emptying the magma chamber in the bowels of the mountain. When the Magma escaped through the vents, the mountain couldn’t support its own weight and collapsed upon itself creating what is now called a caldera. (Back when the park was created they called this a crater). This caldera was extremely deep. Over the next 200 years or so, the caldera filled up with snow and rainwater. The area was made a national park in 1902. When they first started exploring the lake in 1886, they came up with a depth for the lake of 1996 feet. More recently they have used sonar to put the depth of the lake at 1,943 feet. I am shocked how close the 1886 guys got to the real depth!

The lake is big, very blue and up inside a volcano! They aren’t real sure if the volcano is still active or not. The surface of the lake is 5 miles by 6 miles. Very big and very deep. The lake is considered to be the deepest fresh water lake in the country. The lake water is so blue because there are no contaminates in the lake.

Inside the lake is an Island. Wizard Island is really another volcano inside a volcano.

I took some pictures of the lake. Unfortunately is is raining and pictures aren’t doing so well today.

On my drive up from Lassen, the thermometer in the car was reading in the mid to high 60’s. When I got up to the rim of the lake the temperature had dropped to 45 degrees!

If I had waited to come here for a month or so, there would be a good chance I would be snowed in. The park averages 533 inches of snow yearly.

Im headed back to my campground. I will be driving to Logan and Alex’s house tomorrow, so there won’t be any blog entries for a few days.

See you later!

4233 Travel Day