We left Seattle on Saturday, October 11^th, and put in a long travel day. We stopped in Portland for lunch and ate at a Mexican joint called Los Gorditos in one of the college neighborhoods. Good food and cheap but one could easily become a gordito eating there on a regular basis. We left Portland and headed in the direction of Crater Lake. We got as far as LaPine, Oregon and decided to camp at LaPine State Park on the Deschutes River amidst the giant Ponderosa Pines. We saw the “big tree,” the largest Ponderosa ever recorded, 500 years old, almost nine feet in diameter, and just magnificent. Mitch went out for his morning run and got lost on the old logging trails in the adjacent Deschutes National Forest. Fortunately, he bumped into two hunters about six miles away from the campground who gave him a ride most of the way back or he may still be out there.

 

 

After hot (!) showers and breakfast we headed down to Crater National Park to see one of the great natural wonders in the U.S. Crater Lake is the product of the most severe seismic event to have ever occurred in this part of the world. The volcano on Mount Mazama erupted 7700 years ago and most of the mountain collapsed. It is estimated that the entire Northwest was covered with one foot or more of volcanic ash. The heavy lava flow sealed the bottom of the large crater that was created, and which became the deepest lake in North America. The deepest section is 1943 feet. The lake, which is an incredible royal blue, is feed entirely by rainfall, making it one of the cleanest lakes in the world with some sections having visibility from the surface to more than a 100 feet deep.The average annual snowfall is 44 inches.