Patti's birthday on Friday

We celebrated my birthday on Friday by going to Crater Lake for the day. We have LOTS of pictures, but I've carved out a few to illustrate what a beautiful day we had...

We entered through the North Entrance Road. There was no ranger at the entrance gate, so we didn't get a map... there was a board with lots of information posted, so I took pictures of several items, including the map, for reference during the day.

 

This was our first overlook of the lake -- we got there about 9am (2 hour drive from our campground). The sun was on a bit of a difficult angle from where we were, so we decided to drive around to the east to see if it was better...

... and it was -- we could see the reflection of the rim in the lake (and pollen floating on the water -- we figure that's the reason Carl and I have had to take generic Claritin recently!)

From the farthest east viewpoint... part of the East Rim Drive is still closed -- I guess it is all plowed, but they still have repairs or signage or something that isn't yet completed. We had planned to visit Crater Lake on Monday, but delayed until Friday hoping the east side would be open... but alas, it was not.

We knew we wanted to hike, and Carl had read that you should really hike down to the lake's edge...

The only hike down to the edge of the lake is Cleetwood Cove Trail. Note that the sign at the top clearly told us that "the route is strenuous, with a steep grade made even more difficult by the high altitude."

Undeterred, we proceeded!

Wow, going down is no problem at all!

We got down to the lakeside and found a shady rock where we could sit down.

Carl tried out the "portrait" setting on his camera -- which makes the foreground in focus and the background fuzzy.

He took a couple of me...

... then I tried one of him... but it was a little strange with the fuzzy side of the lake in the background...

... so I took it "regular"...

... then he moved to where I had been sitting, and I got a couple of "portraits" of him...

Another portrait of my Carl.

We climbed back up from the shady spot looking for a way down to the lakeshore so we could at least put our feet in the water...

We had met a family in the parking lot at the top -- their little boy's birthday was Thursday, so his mom declared us Birthday Buddies (I'm not sure how happy the little boy was to be birthday buddy with an old lady!) - anyway, the family was down at the lakeside at the same time we were, and she offered to take our picture, and we gratefully accepted.

We eventually found our way down to the lake and put our feet in the cold cold water -- unfortunately, there was a LOT of pollen there on top of the water (I guess the prevailing breezes push it into that cove).

Carl getting his feet frozen too!

There were people swimming in the lake, and one young girl jumped from a rock at least 20 feet above the lake surface -- the jump didn't faze her, but the cold lake did! (she swam back to the shore in the area where we had been sitting in the shade). I don't think I could have convinced my body to get fully into the water!

The hike up was definitely strenuous! We took it slow and steady, with many breaks (looking for shade each stop!) and eventually made it up to the top.

This is the classic view of Crater Lake from the Rim Village area. By afternoon, breezes were up, ruffling the lake, so we didn't get the reflections in the lake that we had seen earlier -- so we were glad that we had driven over to the east side in the morning!

Another fellow visitor took our picture just outside the Rim Visitor Center at Sinnott Overlook.

We wrapped up our day with a shorter hike on Sun Notch Trail in the southeast part of the park. This gave an overlook of Phantom Ship (the rock down there in the lake) - since we couldn't actually go to Phantom Ship Overlook because of East Rim Drive still being closed. Believe it or not, that "rock" is 14 stories tall!

We had such a nice day -- though we were two tired puppies from the hiking we did and the long drive down and back. I am so grateful to be healthy enough to do this on my birthday (or any day!) and to have Carl to do life with!

Note: I checked the National Park's website on Saturday, and it has no warning about the East Rim Drive being closed -- we were *that* close!