Crater Lake photos

 It's going to be hard to choose just a few photos of Crater Lake. We went on a Saturday, so we had to wait in a long line of cars to get in. But once inside it was not crowded, except at the visitor center, which was actually closed. I guess you could stand in a very long socially distanced line to get a sandwich or something, and so everyone was, but we had brought our own food in the car. 

So, there was no visitor center and also no trolley tours or boat tours. I wished we could have done a boat tour, and I almost cancelled our trip, but Mike said he wanted to go anyway. I'm glad we did. It was nice to drive the rim. We drove clockwise as most everyone directed, and it was great!

The first thing we noticed is that it is true that water is unbelievably blue, so much that it seems like there's an error when you look at the photos.

We also got lucky because fires in northern California had already started, but the air was relatively clear that day.

Don't feed the animals! But they are so cute!

The lake is not actually in a "crater", but rather is a caldera. But since we are literally driving around the rim of the caldera, it is very steep down both sides - both the lake side, and the opposite side down the mountain into a valley. Due to the steep angle, there is only one path that goes down to the water. It switches back and forth but it still very steep. Libby and I considered walking down. Mike and Mae didn't want to. But it was hot that day and Libby and I decided against it because we knew would be gone a couple of hours. We decided that a better day would be when the boat tours are open again, as this is the only path down to the boats as well.

When we got further away from the path down to the water, I took this photo. It seemed that NO ONE was choosing to walk down. The path is hard to see in this photo, but look for a whitish-strip going down the volcano on the right-hand side of the screen.

Family in front of Wizard Island:

And Mae and me in front of Phantom Ship island:

I like this one of a black and white bird over the blue water. Yes that's water in the background, not the sky. The bird is a small speck but you can click on the photo to enlarge it.