Crater Lake

Friday the 28th was my 63rd birthday. The weather forecast was favorable so we drove down to Crater Lake in southern Oregon for a couple of nights. It was a little cold & wet when we arrived but as you can see from the accompanying photos it came up sunny and warm on both Saturday & Sunday.

We meandered around the lake most of the morning, stopping to take in the views and take pictures, and also went on a couple of relatively short hikes along the rim of the crater. The first one started at the Crater Lake Lodge at around the 7,000 ft. level and climbed for about 2 miles to the top of a scenic lookout at 8,000 ft. Even though we're in pretty decent shape we were really feeling the effects of the altitude as we made our way up the track. The reward at the top was a glorious panoramic view of the lake and the surrounding countryside. The visibility must have been 50 miles at least.

Crater Lake is one of the deepest lakes on earth - getting to depth of 1950 ft. in the middle. The water is also quite pure, and the refraction of sunlight on the water makes for the deepest blue imaginable on a clear day - really spectacular.

Had dinner at the Lodge on Saturday night - a great meal in a spectacular setting - before driving home to Vancouver on Sunday morning.

Anyway here are a few photos.



Wizard Island from the rim trail.


Old and Gnarly (see if you can tell which is which)


A photo stop along the trail to the summit


One of the features is a formation called the Phantom Ship


Crater Lake was formed when a volcano exploded about 80,000 years ago - apparently the blast was many times greater than Mt. St. Helen's when it blew about 30 years ago. After the mountain exploded the caldera collapsed in on itself forming a giant hole in the ground that gradually filled with water over the ensuing thousands of years. The water in the lake comes from a few springs, rainwater, and snow-melt from the 44 feet of snow they get here every winter. The park roads don't open until June every year, and the park pretty much closes down for the winter by October 12. After that it sees some hardcore cross-country skiers, snow shoe enthusiasts and snowmobilers, but that's about it for 8 months of the year.

The place was discovered by gold seekers in 1853. Before that it was a closely guarded secret among the local Indians to whom it was a sacred area.

Here's a panoramic shot that Rita took from the top of the lookout. See if you can guess how many cups of coffee she had at breakfast.

Victoria

The Fairmont Empress Hotel on the esplanade in Victoria.

The second part of the trip was to Victoria, after a 90 minute ferry ride from Port Angeles across the Straits. The Washington State & British Columbia ferry systems are really quite efficient and make for easy (and scenic) trips across Puget Sound and the Strait. Things have gotten a little more complicated lately with the imposition of a requirement to have passports to reenter the US, and the subsequent more detailed screening by customs & immigration during check-in, but it was really no big deal. Guess it's not unusual to see whales, seals, otters and pods of Orcas during the crossings, but things were pretty quiet for our passage.

Victoria itself was quite a pretty little place - sort of a mini-Sydney, Australia - and we enjoyed it very much. The city spreads around a pretty little bay. Lots of boats and many of the buildings are Victorian era, making for a picturesque scene. Took a harbor ferry tour which lasted for about 90 minutes and generally walked our legs off exploring the town.


Along the inner harbor, just in front of the Empress hotel. You can just see the Parliament building behind Rita.



One of the tourist "things to see" is Butchart Gardens just north of the city and, as it turned out, just a 15 minute walk from where we were staying. Wandered about one day and even had "High Tea" in the dining room.


Lots of nice hikes in the area. There are several Provincial Parks in the region that have spectacular walks along the coast and thru the forest - all within a half hour drive from the center of town. This is from our hike along the Coastal Track in East Sooke Regional Park.

We stayed in a converted boathouse that was originally built in the 1920's, and which was converted to use as a B&B about 20 years ago. Really a neat place and a destination in its own right as you can see from the accompanying photos. The views were terrific. Made it extremely relaxing to sit on the sun porch and just watch the water in the changing light of early evening.








All in all a most enjoyable and relaxing interlude.

Took the ferry from Vancouver Island to Whidby Island on the return, thus making a little circle out of the trip as we drove down from Whidby NAS just north of Seattle. Poked our heads in at McChord AFB to have lunch & check out the Exchange before returning to Vancouver on Saturday afternoon.

Olympic

Just returned from a short trip to The Olympic Peninsula and Victoria, BC. Our first stop was Olympic National Park near Port Angeles. We stayed in a rental property on Lake Sutherland which was quite close to a couple of entrances into the park, which is actually a gigantic old growth rain forest centered around Mt. Olympus. Lots of great hiking, although most of it was at between 5000 and 7000 ft so we were huffing & puffing pretty good by the time the day was over.

First outing was up to the Hurricane Ridge visitor center, where several hikes branched out and into the surrounding hills. This being the most easily accessed part of the park it's quite popular with families and day trippers looking for an easy outing in the hills. As per usual however, once you walk about a half mile along one of the trails you leave the crowd behind and pretty much have the place to yourself.

One of the nice features of the park is that the wildlife have gotten comfortable with human presence and so are not skittish at all. Not tame exactly but nearly so. Lots of ground squirrels, marmots and a herd of resident deer that seems to stay anchored near the parking area grazing on the grass that grows around the visitor center. It's not unusual to round a corner on a hike and find one or more looking back at you, grazing contentedly as you pass close by. Case in point being the photo above which was taken with no zoom on the camera - she really was that close. Later on the hike I noticed a buck coming towards us from up the trail so we stood fast so as not to startle him on the narrow ledge. After about 30 seconds he came upon us & didn't bat an eye...just diverted to the right along a section of pretty steep slope until he had passed us (no more than 10 feet away) then regained the trail behind us & continued on his way.



Was overcast in the morning, burning off later in the day to bright sunshine. We had to drive thru the clouds to get to the top...at about 5000 elevation.





After a couple of hours we topped out along a ridge in the hills where several trails meet. We sat on a rocky outcrop to have lunch and just rest a while before the long trip back. The photo above is the view to the north, down thru a pretty little valley that eventually finds its way to the sea, although the low cloud cover over the Straits of Juan de Fuca precluded a view of it that day.

As we sat there we were visited by a marmot who checked us out from the cover of some rocks, and then Rita saw something moving from right to left below us about 500 yards away. It was a Black bear, and it appeared to be heading to intercept one of the trails just below us which, had it turned up the trail as we expected, would have put it in our laps in just a few minutes. Rita was about to wet herself - preparing flee in terror if the bear had turned our way - and I was frankly looking around wondering how quickly we could evacuate, when the bear continued across the trail and proceeded to what appeared to us to be a nearly sheer cliff, which he proceeded to climb. We sat mesmerized for several minutes before remembering the camera so the picture is necessarily a distant & going-away shot but, trust me, he actually passed a lot closer than that.

Unlike the grizzlies of Montana & the Yellowstone area, the black bears around here are generally pretty harmless and not a threat to people, but seeing our first one while on foot made for a pulse-quickening few minutes in our day nevertheless.




The second day we drove up thru another park entrance, this time to Sol Duc hot springs, which is a mini resort in the mountains and which also has some neat trails up to distant waterfalls. It was a cool, drizzly day however so we cut the walking short and didn't take any photos.

Next up was Victoria and Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Update

Some Late Entries From the Last Trip

We're leaving tomorrow for a short trip up to the Olympic Peninsula for a few days, then taking the ferry from Port Angeles over to the city of Victoria in British Columbia for another 5 days. During the packing, which Rita usually begins about a month before we actually leave to go anywhere, we came across some photos of our last stop on the recent trip coming home from Yellowstone. We detoured a bit to visit a place called Traveler's Rest on the Lolo River in Montana - a place that figured prominently in the journey of Lewis & Clark back in 1805-06. The Corps of Discovery stopped here twice - once before they climbed over Lolo Pass with their Indian guide in Sept of 1805, then again in the Spring of 1806 on the return trip. They've apparently pinpointed the location of their encampment by detecting traces of mercury in what served as their latrine. Seems that the standard medicinal that Lewis prescribed for the men was a powerful emetic that was laced with mercury, so when they found high concentrations of the stuff in one area of the camp ground they were pretty sure they had found the spot since no one else during that time (or era I guess) had access to the "advanced" medicines that Lewis was carrying.

It was a pretty spot along a "bold running stream" as Clark described it in his journal, and the local State historical society has really done a nice job laying out the site and providing interpretive signage to help visitors tour the old campground, which was popular with Indians and French trappers for hundreds of years before Lewis & Clark passed this way.

Anyway, here are some late entries from the last trip:


Lolo Creek, the "Bold Running Stream" that Clark describes in his journal. Traveler's rest campground is on the right bank.


This is the Clearwater River descending out of the Bitteroot Mountains just west of Lolo Pass...ie across the continental divide. The explorers paralleled the river on horseback until they reached a place further on where they could build canoes and finish the rest of the journey to the Pacific by water. The Clearwater eventually goes into the Snake River, which then empties into the Columbia all the way to the ocean. This is the same route they followed back upstream on the homeward leg in the Spring of 1806.


It was Spring when we passed this way, so most of the early flowers were still in bloom. This is the flower of the Bitteroot plant, from which the surrounding mountains and river take their name. The indians dried the roots and pounded it into flour from which they made a sort of bread, which was a staple of the Shoshone diet. Supposed to be pretty foul-tasting stuff.

We're off tomorrow morning for the drive up to the Olympic National Park. We catch the ferry over to Victoria on Aug. 9 .