Crater Lake Oregon
“Oregon: Where every road leads to a picture-perfect moment.” - unknown
In her book Wild, Cheryl Strayed talks about her first sight of Crater Lake as she’s walking the Pacific Crest Trail. Ever since we read it for our book club, my friend Geeta talked about taking a trip there. Then we discovered there was a season to traveling there and time passed. At the beginning of this year, Geeta asked me if we were going to continue to talk about it or actually do something. That was a challenge wandering veena could not resist and so we took the plunge and booked our trip right then.
Here we are finally. We flew into Medford, unfortunately Alaska Airlines changed the flight timings and we arrived at 10:50 P.M. with an hour and a half drive ahead of us to Klamath Falls where we were to lay our heads at night.
As we drove out of Medford on a dark and lonely highway, with the smell of smoke teasing our nostrils, I wondered if we were a bit crazy and should have just stayed the night in Medford. It was only when we heard the ranger at Crater Lake, telling us that wolf packs and potentially bears are found all the way up and down that area down to Medford, were we grateful that we knew nothing of this as we drove down the winding roads. Fortunately, we reached Klamath Falls fairly uneventfully around 1:00AM, checked into our hotel and prepared for our packed three days of adventures.
Since we had gotten is so late, we decided that we would go to Crater Lake the following day and spend our first day wandering around the local area and visiting the Lava Beds National Monument.
In the lobby as we wrapped up breakfast, we ran into a ranger who was very knowledgeable of the area and gave us good advice and directions including making sure we drove through the town of Merrill at the posted 25 miles per hour speed limit. It seemed to be a well-known secret since everyone slowed down to the speed limit.
Soon the terrain began to change, from the green pastoral fields to boulders, rocks and other remnants of volcanic eruptions and lava flow. Along the side of the road was the beautiful Tule Lake Wildlife preserve home to many varieties of birds and local animals.
To our surprise we saw an intrepid Bambi running across the road almost right in front of our car; thank God, Geeta who has great reflexes was driving. He headed into the trees by the side of the road where his mother was sheltering.
To our delight the two deer seemed to stand and stare at us fairly tamely as we pulled over to the side of the road and began to click. Good thing there was no other traffic on the road.
As we entered into the National Park grounds, we passed many historical battleground sights of the Modoc War. As the first settlers came into Oregon, the land belonging to the local native American tribes were parceled out these settlers and the Native Americans relegated to reservations except unfortunately the Modoc Indians were not granted their own reservation land. They came out to these lands and hid out in the various caves and other formations fighting a guerilla type war against the army.
The Modoc War as it is known is considered one of the costliest wars with a price tag of half million dollars and many lives lost on both sides of the conflict including an army general.
From the visitor center armed with a map we explored the Mushpot which is the only lit lava tube where you can go into without hard hats and flashlights. There are a few areas where you have to bend over but no crawling is required. Along the way signs explain the natural formations and how they were created. It’s a fascinating not to be missed visit.
Tule Lake Segregation camp was the largest of the internment camps during World War II housing almost 20,000 people of Japanese American descent.
Surrounded by a fence, the guard tower dominating the center and abandoned farm tools and implements littering the small square the area has an abandoned look and feel. The visitor center has been moved and the museum that is now housed here had no problem allowing us to wander through this area. Such a cruel example of what fear and racism can cause even in a country like the USA which is constantly condemning similar actions in other parts of the world.
This little square of land, stands forgotten, abandoned and unmentioned, a silent testament to what occurred here.
George Takei, well known as Commander Sulu in the famous Star Trek series spent his earliest years here in this camp which is no better than most concentration camps in Europe.
The terrain in this part of Oregon is full of contrasts from this beautiful green pastoral scene of cattle farms, dairy farms, potato farms and other crops to the lava rocks and tall grasses and dormant volcanoes ringing the valley.
We headed into the town of Klamath falls for lunch and a walk around the quaint main street that sat drowsing in the afternoon sun. A lot of the shops and restaurants were closed.
Well, that’s because the town had an artisan fair along main street that evening complete with food stalls, bands and bible groups along with the artisans.
What a welcome contrast from the afternoon.
Given everyone’s advice, we headed to Crater Lake National Park early in the morning. The entrance to the park was shuttered with no one to check our newly acquired National Park Pass. We headed towards the Rim Village and the lake.
Our first sight of the lake as we pulled over the side of the road with other cars was breath taking. The deep blue color is mesmerizing. The lake fills a 2148 ft deep caldera that was formed by the collapse of the Mazama Volcano 7700 plus years ago. No rivers flow in or out of the lake, the evaporation being compensated by the rain and snow.
To put things in perspective, our ranger guide gave us an example of the Washington Monument, topped by the Eiffel Tower, topped by the statue of Liberty plus change to illustrate how deep the lake is, making it the deepest lake in the US and perhaps 8th or 10th deepest in the world.
Rather than driving ourselves, we decided to take the ranger guided trolley tour that stopped at various points along the East Rim drive explaining the natural features of the lake and fanciful shapes and names.
Wizard island, Phantom Ship, Skell rock, the Old Man Tree which has been floating in the lake for over 100 years.
We were looking forward to our last lookout where the ranger would point out the various volcanoes that surround this area. Unfortunately, the smoke from the fire drove the visibility down and closed some of the trails and roads. We watched the helicopters fly over the blaze dumping fire retardant and water and chatted with the fire spotters stationed at the lookout.
Geeta hiked around the lake while I adjourned to the cool of the Crater Lake Lodge before a late lunch took us back to our hotel. only to be greeted with the news of the CrowdStrike outage that had crippled the global airline industry. Would we be able to get home the next day?