Today we were extra lazy getting around. We knew Crater Lake National Park was experiencing snow and poor visibility. The website said the road to the Rim Village was temporarily closed until 1 or 2pm to clear heavy snows received last night. So we drug our feet, drove to Klamath Falls and I bought snow chains at O’Reilly’s Auto Parts. Didn’t think I would need them but our Journey is likely to take us all the way to Alaska kind of early in the season so it seems prudent. We did a quick Wal Mart run and then ate lunch at the Klamath Basin Brewing Company. We had a super tasty BBQ Burger but the micro brew I thought was only fair.
About 2pm we headed for Crater Lake NP. The park was a little less than an hour drive. While it was fairly warm and partly cloudy in Klamath, halfway to the park it was low clouds and intermittent rain. The temperature kept dropping until it was about 32F at the park visitor center. The visitor center had drifts about 6 feet and the building entrance was through the snow tunnel. Crater has a nice visitor center with a well done video to watch. We watched most of the video and headed to Rim Village where you might be able to see the lake. At the Rim the drifts were at least 8 feet thick. The road to the Rim had been cleared so the drive was easy. We found an out of the way parking area to let Maverick run off leash. Boy, did he have a great time. The snow where we let him off was about 2ft and he jumped, ran, and burrowed with glee. We found a spot to access the Rim viewing trail. Again the snow was about 2ft but only a 10-20 yard slog to the viewing trail. No luck on viewing the lake for us. There were probably 6-10 people wishing to catch a glimpse but only one family claimed to even have seen the water. We enjoyed the snow covered forest and steep slope we assume ended at the lake. After a little bit we slogged back to the car and drove back to the coach. As I write this I checked the Crater Lake web cam again and low and behold you could see the lake in its entirety for the first time today. We missed it by an hour or two. Bummer. Oh well, that the way it goes. Tomorrow we head for Bend Oregon. We’ve heard quite a lot of positive reviews of Bend so we are going to spend 4 nights there.
