Crater Lake and Southwest Oregon

We are happy to be out of the Portland area with its daunting traffic.  On Saturday June 7 we headed south to Myrtle Creek OR, our staging point to visit Crater Lake National Park.  Sunday was cloudy but Monday was better.  It took 2.5 hours to drive up to the visitor center and another two hours (we went back a different way) to return to Myrtle Creek.  Absolutely worth it.  The drive down followed the Umpqua River, another of the beautiful, clear rivers here in the mountain west.

 Crater Lake National Park

Crater Lake is deep sapphire blue.  It's what remains of a major volcano which blew off 6,000 feet of its top about 7000 years ago.  It is still fairly high, 6,600 feet.  Since we have been at sea level or close to it for months, the altitude made me light-headed for a few minutes. Fortunately I didn't have to do any strenuous exertion.  The dogs, of course were fine.  And so was Mike.

The lake is mesmerizing in its intensity.  We were somewhat surprised that the east rim road is still closed due to snow and there were large swaths of snow falling away from the west rim road. The dogs happily rolled around in a snowbank.

 We stayed at a small park with many permanent residents in Myrtle Creek .  One of the rigs had this sign hanging on the front:

We have no plans for further sight-seeing for the next couple of weeks.  We are now in Kelso WA and will be having dinner tomorrow with Brandy Downey (my grand-niece) and her fiance Derek Porritt.