Crater Lake National Park

Sunshine in the morning! What a welcome relief and change of pace from the last couple of days. I would never survive in the Pacific Northwest – too much bad weather, too depressing ;-). Crater Lake National Park is our destination for the day and we are eager to get on the road looking forward to taking one of Oregon’s scenic byways.

I’ts the Umpqua-Rogue Scenic Byway all the way to the park. The smell of smoke from a forest fire was in the air and they had blocked all parking/pull-out areas for about 10 miles for a stretch of road.

The plan was to ride the Rim Road around the volcano crater and then continue to Klamath Falls. Well, all was well until we went on the Rim Road going counter clockwise (mistake!) around the crater. No guard rails and some steep drop-offs after just inches where the black top ended. You know where this is going. We pull over into a pull-out and Diane has that panic ‘I-am-scared-sh*less’ look on her face. Time to regroup. No more Rim Road for her. We decide to ride back the way we came in, take a small detour and enter the park from the South.

Diane would wait at the visitor center while I rode the loop taking lots of pictures along the way. Sounds like a plan. When we get to the visitor center it’s already 15:30. On the off-chance that the campground isn’t full we inquire about a spot. They have an RV space left which we take. Once we unload our gear I took off to ride the entire rim road loop. It took me about 90 minutes. There were more spots Diane wouldn’t have liked.

Diane’s ‘birthday dinner’ was at the ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet at the village restaurant. Nothing fancy but they did have some vegetarian options. Though sunny the air was cool and once the sun went down it got cold quickly so we just retreated into the tent for a good nights sleep. As feared, the morning was cold, really, really COLD!

Todays route.