Journeys›Photograph

A Clear August Day at Crater Lake

·Klamath County, Oregon·#summer#landscape#oregon#crater lake national park#national parks
Two smiling people pose in front of a wooden Crater Lake National Park sign, surrounded by tall pine trees and a road.

Crater Lake was the point of the drive north into Oregon — the state's only national park, on the books since 1902, and neither of us had seen it. We came in through the south entrance and stopped for the obligatory picture at the sign before winding up to the rim.

Nothing prepares you for the color. The lake sits in a caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,700 years ago, and at 1,943 feet it's the deepest lake in the country, which is apparently what makes it that blue — not sky-blue, ink-blue, so saturated it looks wrong. We worked our way around the rim drive stopping at pullouts, first through the trees where you only get slices of it, then higher up where the whole basin opens out.

Wizard Island got the most attention — a cinder cone rising out of the water near the west end, with its own trees and its own little crater on top. A volcano inside a volcano. From the higher overlooks the wind left long pale streaks across the surface, the only thing moving out there. Not a single boat on the water the whole time we watched.

A deep blue lake is encircled by rocky mountains and lush green evergreen trees under a bright blue sky.A deep blue lake with a tree-covered island is surrounded by steep mountains under a clear sky, with evergreen trees in the foreground.A vivid blue lake surrounded by mountains and framed by green pine trees under a clear blue sky.A deep blue lake fills a volcanic crater, surrounded by cliffs and forests, with an island and evergreen trees in the foreground.A deep blue lake fills a volcanic caldera, with a large island and surrounding rugged, forested mountains under a clear sky.Vast deep blue lake surrounded by rugged mountains, with a large forested island and trees in the foreground.Deep blue lake with a dark, conical, tree-covered island, surrounded by rugged mountains under a clear blue sky.A deep blue lake surrounded by steep, rocky cliffs with a prominent conical island under a clear blue sky.

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