A Clear August Day at Crater Lake National Park

We made the trip to Crater Lake National Park on a perfectly clear day in early August. After getting the obligatory photo at the south entrance sign, we drove up toward the rim, winding through the tall pines.

The first look at the lake itself is stunning. The water is an unbelievably deep and intense blue, a color that's hard to describe and even harder to capture in a photograph. With a bright, cloudless sky, the color was especially striking against the dark green of the trees and the rugged caldera walls.

We spent our time just moving between the different viewpoints along the rim. Each stop offered a slightly different perspective of the vast lake, the surrounding cliffs, and Wizard Island rising from the water. The scale of the crater is immense. We just took in the quiet and the sheer size of the landscape on a perfect summer afternoon.