Beauty We Didn’t Know We Would See!

This day was forecasted to be sunny and 60s. Yesterday I had checked, again, Crater Lake National Park website. Still closed. Some of the park is always closed in the winter but even Rim Road was closed now due to so much snow. Sad. We had not been to Crater Lake before. I suggested we drive as far as we can up there. Kevin promised me that as soon as we saw snow on the road, he would turn us around. Deal. We took Crater Lake Highway, Hwy 62. The highest point on the road was around 6000 ft elevation; Central Point, where our campground is at, is about 1200 ft.

Near Lost Creek Lake we saw cinders on the road in the middle and on the edges. We also saw a state truck sweeper. I later texted dad to see if his state roads uses sweepers. He said yes, and they don’t use cinders often because the businesses didn’t like the cinders tracked into their stores. HA As we climbed higher in elevation, the snow on the sides of the road got deeper and deeper. Soon it was taller than the truck! You could see where the snow blower had blown snow up and over the edges of the road – it looked like large snowballs on the trees. HAHA We kept going as obviously the road was open and no snow was on the road. Kept going and saw the entrance to Crater Lake National Park! We went to the guard shack and she said the visitor center and Rim Road are closed but the gift shop and cafe are open. Plus, we could climb a snow bank and see the lake. I was so excited.

As we continued down the road we saw a stop sign that had snow higher than it. We went to the parking lot where the road was closed past that. The lot was probably about 1/2 full. The building was buried completely in snow. We walked the path and went inside. We followed the signs to the 3rd floor for the view area. Nope, couldn’t see out – too much snow. A ranger on break told Kevin that we can walk up the snowbank and our shoes would be fine. We walked outside, crossed the road and went up the snowbank. As we came to the top of probably 75 ft snowbank, oh goodness, we saw Crater Lake.

The ground is covered in snow, the water a pure blue, the reflection made it hard to tell where the shoreline is. Kevin and I just marveled at the stunning, breathtaking, magnificent, picturesque…these words don’t do it justice. I didn’t take pictures at first because I just wanted to absorb what I was seeing. Then I took pictures. Put the phone away. Pulled it out again and took more.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.  There were just enough clouds that added to the reflections and even some airplane contrails. We didn’t want to leave. Temp was 50° but the sun was warm and we had on our jackets. With no wind, the water was a mirror and we were’t cold.

We stayed there for quite a while. Finally we pulled ourselves away and started down the snowbank. My Sketcher shoes were sliding. I told myself if I fall, don’t put my hands out, just slide on my bottom. I said out loud that we should just slide on our bottoms and other laughed and said they thought the same thing. Kevin held my hand and soon…down I went on to my bottom. I started laughing at how funny it was that I told myself how to land if I fell. Yep, did it just the way I told myself. 🙂 Kevin kept ahold of my hand and I am glad he didn’t fall. I wasn’t hurt at all and just a tiny bit sore later. We went to the gift shop and bought an ornament and Kevin got his passport stamped and a smashed souvenir penny. When we got to the parking lot and it was clear full. Neat that many people went, like us, even though it was closed. Continuing on the drive we were quickly off the mountain and in a large, flat area north of Upper Klamath Lake. The drive up to Crater Lake was very mountainous with huge tall pine trees along the road. Sometimes you couldn’t see anything for the trees except the road in front of you and the blue sky way in the distance. Now this area was hilly with wide open lands. Looks like a lot of pasture lands. Along the road we soon came to a patch where to the left of us was the steepest slope and to the right was railroad tracks and then the lake. There were signs warning of falling rocks and they weren’t kidding! There was a very tall fence along both sides of the road – posts with wires about every 6 inches. And we saw huge rocks up against the fences. Kevin said he has seen the falling rocks signs before but never had seen a real reason for them like right here. We drive around the city of Klamath Falls and then the 1-1/2 hour west back home.

Got home to the campground and Kevin built a fire. This was our first real-wood fire since RVing full-time! It was so fun to watch the fire. We burned up most of the bundle and will have to buy more from the office tomorrow.

One more.  😃 I can’t help but share.