We had been to see Crater Lake National Park some years ago,
but it was late August when we were there, and the smoke hid most of the details. So we thought
we’d give it another try since we weren’t too far away from the park.
Deep blue Crater Lake
We found a place to camp not far from the south entrance to
the park—the only entrance that is open until the snow melts sometime in
mid-June. I read that Crater Lake is one of the snowiest inhabited places on
earth. They get feet of snow every year, and it sticks around. One of the
buildings we saw had an entrance on the second floor, with a ladder next to it,
for when the whole first floor was buried in snow.
Crater Lake is a very snowy place, even in May
The day we went this time was absolutely clear, with a deep
blue sky above the deep, deep blue lake. The lake is more than 1,900 feet deep at
its deepest point, and it has a small secondary volcano at the southwest part
of the lake, Wizard Island. Despite the snow, there was a lot of greenery,
too—many pine trees, but some deciduous plants as well. The bright green and
deep blue, along with the patches of white snow, made every photo just
spectacular!
Wizard Island in Crater Lake
We walked along the Rim Trail, sometimes having to work our
way through patches of snow, and saw great vistas with mountains in the
background. It was chilly but sunny, a big difference from the hot desert parks
we’d visited earlier in the month.
After we’d seen what we could see (the Rim Road was still
closed beyond the part of the south rim we walked along, and the trail down to
the lake is closed for three years while they rebuilt it and the marina on the
lake), we headed back down to the south entrance and also backtracked to past
where we’d been camped, to pick up US 97 and head north to Eugene for the
night. I think we actually wound up in Springfield (which may or may not be the
inspiration for the Springfield in The Simpsons) but in any event we
stayed at a nice motel and had a great dinner at the Hops Valley Brewery across
the street from the motel.
Calla lillies in Springfield
The next morning, we hit the road to cover the last leg of
this section of our trip; we went up I-5 to Corvallis, and then across US 20 to
Newport, where we caught the Pacific Coast Highway (US 101) and headed to Depoe
Bay. I followed this truck toting a HUGE boulder from Newport to where we turned off in Depoe Bay. There are so many rocks on the coast, did they really need to import one?
Someone was moving a boulder along the coast highway
We arrived mid-afternoon, and Amanda was there to greet us. Chloe the dog was there, too; Cy arrived a couple of hours later after school was out. We had a nice dinner at Gracie’s Sea Hag restaurant, down in
town, and we’re going to be hanging out here for a week or so before going to
bother friends and family over in Salem in the Willamette Valley.
The Sea Hag in Depoe Bay
But while we were here, we had an absolutely beautiful day the day before Memorial Day, sunny and even warm (!) so it was perfect for a cookout. The Kerby clan came from Salem and we grilled the appropriate picnic meats, served with ranch beans, mac & cheese, salad, a cheese board, and delicious pies. It was good that we planned it for Sunday, because Memorial Day was a rainy, soggy mess. Cy and I walked down to the path above the harbor to watch the Fleet of Flowers memorial but we got completely soaked, and the speeches and singing went on for so long (with everyone there getting drenched), that we headed back before the Coast Guard boat that was decorated with wreaths of flowers headed out of the harbor to the bay. There are usually a number of boats, but the lead boat dropped out because of the rough seas, and I guess they decided maybe to just let the professionals with a big steady boat go out on their own. I was sorry to miss the pageantry usually associated with the Fleet of Flowers, but man oh man it was cold. And wet. We came back and started a fire to warm up.
Cy’s woodpile rivals the one at Rabbit Hash
In the evening, we went to dinner in Newport, at Local
Ocean, a restaurant with a lovely view of Yaquina Bay, to celebrate my birthday. Dinner was delicious; we
also went to a nearby candy store and visited the sea lions down on the docks.
And after dinner, we went to see an amazing thing—a blue whale skeleton that had been assembled as a display at the Oregon State University Marine Studies Institute across the Bay Bridge from Newport.
The view from the restaurant, with the
Yaquina Bay Bridge in the background
This whale skeleton is particularly notable because it is
the bones of a whale that died and beached on the southern coast of Oregon,
about 50 miles north of the California border, in 2015. The last time a beached
blue whale was seen in Oregon was in 1806, when Lewis & Clark saw one (and
collected blubber and whale oil for their expedition from it) on Cannon Beach,
a ways north of where we are. Blue whales are fairly common out in the deep
water, ten miles or more off the coast, but they are rarely seen closer to
shore. So rare that it only happens every couple of hundred years, apparently.
A 72-foot blue whale skeleton on display at the OSU
Marine Studies building at South Beach on Yaquina Bay
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