Our Crater Lake Try and Fail
Up until this point in our travels we had luckily not experienced any, so to speak, travel "failures." We always have an itinerary before we leave and we usually more or less stick to it. The exceptions that arise are usually due to tired feet or, somewhat jokingly, church sightseeing fatigue. (Europe has a lot of churches, ok?)
Crater Lake National Park in Oregon was a place we were both particularly looking forward to seeing with our own eyes. It was one of our longest days of driving (4.5 hours roundtrip) on our entire honeymoon because we opted for a day trip from Dunsmuir, California (read here) rather than spending a night any farther north.
The closer we drove to Crater Lake NP the less ideal the weather became on our route. It rained, it drizzled, it was foggy. By the time we finally drove into the park there were forecasts of several inches of snow within the park...in July! Fun fact: Crater Lake National Park sees an even higher average snowfall (43 feet!) than Yellowstone National Park. And if I'm remembering correctly from the educational video at the park welcome center, it is the snowiest national park. Well, that explained our weather situation at the time! If you had asked me before my honeymoon, "Which national park receives the highest annual snowfall?" my answer would have been Yellowstone. Here's to learning something new!
This fog makes me look like a ray of sunshine here...sunglasses, please! The fog was so thick that we could only peer down a few hundred feet into the crater. Instead of the gorgeous blue lake that friends' photos have touted (yes, jealous over here!), we were greeted with a dense Dementor-like fog. Luckily our souls are still intact.
On any other day with beautiful weather, you should be able to see what I've been told is a stunningly blue, clear lake. It's the deepest lake in the U.S. at 1,949 ft deep. Crater Lake even set a world record for water clarity, which is measured using a secchi disk. Essentially, this disk, which has a black and white pattern on its surface, is lowered into the water until the scientists can no longer see the disk. Crater Lake's world record sits at 143 ft deep for water clarity.
The geology of Crater Lake is fascinating as well. There are no streams that run in or out of the lake. All of the water is due to snow melt. Originally there was a mountain in its place--Mount Mazama--that erupted 7,700 years ago. This eruption caused a caldera five to six miles across, which is now what we call Crater Lake. A lot of gas also escaped from the surface through the ash deposits, causing vents to form--also known as pinnacles or fossilized fumaroles--in the subsurface, which became exposed over time due to erosion (see above photo).
With only so much to see or, rather, not see, we obviously didn't spend a lot of time at Crater Lake aside from watching the educational video and trying rather pathetically to see any sign of the actual lake. So we drove back to Dunsmuir and called it a day. Cue violins playing. Anyway, my point is that even if something doesn't go as planned, do your best to make the most of the situation. In the end, though we would have preferred to see the lake, we had more time to enjoy dinner in an old train car at our Railroad Resort.
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