Stunning, just stunning. The deep blue color of the water just holds your eyes. It's hard to turn away from its beauty.
Crater Lake is about 6 miles wide, 1,943' deep and the rim drive is 33 miles around the crater. We decided to take the ranger-guided boat tour. It's a two-hour boat ride circling the inside of the crater. This gave the only opportunity to see the various rock formations up close.
We detoured from the rim to go see "The Pinnacles". These are basically chimney formations made from ash. We couldn't believe they haven't completely eroded away considering we could actually watch particles blowing off the embankment.
And besides a large crater and volcanoes, there were the wildflowers. Here are Lewis' Monkeyflower.
After a great day touring Crater Lake, we even got to see some *big* birds on the drive home. First there was a bald eagle (which Andy did a quick u-turn and tried to chase the bird so I could get a picture! ha! If it wasn't for the never-ending cow pastures, we might've caught it...someday.) But then we saw this large juvenile bald eagle fly off the fence. We saw many hawks and eagles on the way home. What a treat!
We detoured from the rim to go see "The Pinnacles". These are basically chimney formations made from ash. We couldn't believe they haven't completely eroded away considering we could actually watch particles blowing off the embankment.
And besides a large crater and volcanoes, there were the wildflowers. Here are Lewis' Monkeyflower.
After a great day touring Crater Lake, we even got to see some *big* birds on the drive home. First there was a bald eagle (which Andy did a quick u-turn and tried to chase the bird so I could get a picture! ha! If it wasn't for the never-ending cow pastures, we might've caught it...someday.) But then we saw this large juvenile bald eagle fly off the fence. We saw many hawks and eagles on the way home. What a treat!
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