Woke mid-morning in Klamath Falls and dined o gourmet breakfasts of Sausage McMuffins with eggs... hot off the stove. HMMMM....
Set out for Portland. Passed Klamath this and Klamath that... then, with Mt. Hood looming in the distance, began to see signage for Crater Lake. Janice checked Google and found it would be only 20 minutes out of our way, so let's do it! After leaving our planned route and driving for about 90 minutes (!) we arrived at the South Entrance of Crater Lake National Park. Stopped at the visitor center... bought the cap... rolled to the first lookout point. And WOW, it is truly awe inspiriting. I've never seen anything like it. The size, the perfect mirror of the absolutely glass, crystal clear water, the deep blue color, are all amazing. The surface is soo smooth that it take a while to accept that you're looking at a mountain side, and its reflection below, because it's impossible to spot where one ends and the other begins.
Drove to the 2nd lookout point about 45 degrees around the lake. The rocky dropoffs into the lake, still partially snow covered, were amazing.
Heading out we could not exit the North gate because the roadways had not reopened from their winter closure. The lake gets 44 ft of snow per year on average!!! So going back out the way we came in, we stopped again at the Visitor Center and watched a short video. Then had to retrace about 45 minutes or so... all in all it was 2 or 3 hours out of our way, but it was truly awesome and the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!
On the way again, we saw signs for Colliers Logging Museum and decided to stop. It was an outdoor self guided walk through log cabins and lots of equipment used in logging over the years. The Gift Shop was closed, but some officials from Salem's Park & Rec department were there to do a Workman's Comp insurance checkup, and they were nice enough to let us in. Really nice people! Learned a bit about logging and go underway again.
We found our hotel and got some quick dinner. Then realized we'd only reserved a single night, not two, so we won't do all the sight seeing in Portland we'd planned. But that's for tomorrow...
