The drive to Crater Lake figured out to be longer as we initially thought (around 6 hours) and that’s why we arrived at the north entrance of Crater Lake NP in the late afternoon. We tried our luck at a camp ground in the National Forest which surrounds the national park and were able to grab a site next to a lake. Due to the elevation of almost 3,000m (10,000 feet) it was way too cold to swim there, but in return we could obfuscate a breathtaking red sunset over the lake. We haven’t seen such an extreme red until now.
Even though it was freezing cold (around 5°C or 40°F), the night in the tent was quite comfortable and we took off at 6:30 in order to have breakfast at Crater Lake. The first view on the lake might take your breath away. Due to its unique geological features, the lake has a crystal clear blue colour which might hardly be found elsewhere in the world. Little geology lesson: Only 7,700 years ago, Crater Lake was not a lake, but an active volcano and additionally the highest peak in Oregon. However, its magma chamber almost completely emptied after an enormous explosion and forced the volcano and huge parts of its surroundings to collapse into the chamber leaving an up to 800m deep hole in the ground. Due to the elevation of the plateau, there are up to 13m snow every year and what do we get if we combine a huge hole without outlets with a lot of snow and therefore meltwater in the summer? Correct, a lake 🙂 As there are almost no natural creatures (there are some fish and crayfish though, but we’re pretty sure that they are imported by humans) or plants, the lake is crystal clear without any pollutions.
Ok enough of geology… We drove once around the lake and hiked the Cleetwood Cove Trail downhill to the surface of the lake (which is of course too cold to swim with 14°C, 57°F) and uphill the Watchman Trail to the highest point overlooking the lake. So we got all different perspectives! There is not much more to do there and so we drove to Medford to our next couchsurfer Chelsea. She, her boyfriend, her two dogs and the house pig Wilbur accepted us to stay for a night. Yes you read right, we had a super cute and funny pig in the house for a night 🙂 They took us out to a local brewery for a beer and super delicious tacos for dinner.
The next morning, we drove back to California to the Lassen Volcanic NP. Unfortunately we had to swap our beloved car, as one tyre made problems since a few weeks (yes, that’s how Hertz handles problems with tyres, they exchange the car and not the tyre…).
After that was all set up (which took more time than we thought) we drove to the national park where we wanted to catch up with Mike and Michelle from Australia for two nights. It’s pretty cool if you can catch up every here and then on the road 🙂 They also rented a car and do a similar tour as we did, but in the reversed direction. We made a campfire and barbecue and of course we had a lot to chat about. Together, we climbed up Lassen Peak the next day, walked to Bumpass Hell and swam in the Summit Lake the next day. Especially, Bumpass Hell is quite weird as there is an active volcanic area with mud pools and geysers showing up in the middle of nowhere. Tobias and Mike had to give a miss to surf on a swimming trunk in the lake (Kerstin managed to do so for a few seconds, but with a lot of help of the two of them :–) ). In the evening we had another campfire with barbecue, beer and long chats before saying good bye the next morning. They drove north to the Redwood NP, while we were driving south back to San Francisco in order to return the borrowed camp gear. So just a few hours later we were around 500km apart from each other, how weird is that? But hopefully they catch up with us again on their way through Germany 🙂