Wood's Prairie Travels

Crater Lake National Park is just a few minutes from our camp at Diamond Lake. Our first glimpse from the rim of the caldera made one of the lake’s famous attributes undeniable, it is a gorgeous blue color. Later in the day we researched just what color would describe what we saw. Prussian blue was the closest we could come to describing the hue. The early morning sun glittered off the lake’s surface as we gazed in wonder.  The lake is about six miles in diameter and Wizard Island, off the near shore, is a well-known feature. As we began our day exploring this National Park, we wondered what else would we learn during our stay. Why so blue? According to park information, the color is due to two things – depth and cleanliness. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in North America and is said to be the cleanest large body of water in the world! Formed when 12,000-foot Mount Mazama erupted 7,700 years ago, the crater eventually filled with water that is only precipitation and runoff from sno

We found our next camp along the shore of Diamond Lake with the towering Mt. Thielson keeping watch over us. A cloudy first day gave us some rainbows and puffy pink clouds. It seemed to us that the mountain looked an awful lot like the mountain that The Grinch lives in, so we kept watch for him. This was a great campground and our site was right on the lake. During the day, we had frequent visitors in the form of gray jays, squirrels, ducks, and geese. Later that night, the sparks from our campfire flew away into the black night and brought back with them a brilliant sunrise. As the sun rose behind Mt. Thielson, first there was a glimmer, then there was a silvery rim, and finally the sun rose, a white diamond above the black mountain.  The suns rays spread more diamonds across the lake surface.  What a beautiful way to start our day.

 As we began a short fall trip, initially we didn’t plan to write a blog. However, as Pat pointed out, “It’s a good way to keep track of our adventures". So, we begin... Our first day was a trek down I-5 through Oregon. Once past the always questionable freeway traffic in Portland, we cruised on down to Eugene where we headed east on Hwy 58. It’s a busy road that connects to Bend but is a scenic drive through a conifer forest. That night we camped at the Black Canyon Campground which was practically empty. Although the name is a bit forbidding, it was a nice campground alongside the Willamette River. This far upriver, it was barely more than a stream and provided a nice way to cool off on a rather warm, 85 degree, day. The road noise and occasional train across the valley didn’t disturb our sleep. It's always nice to get back into the woods...