Afternoon everyone…..
This entire trip was planned due to our community not having a meetup this year. We did three straight years, but it lost progress when I did posts about interest in one.
So my girlfriend Jennifer knows somebody that had done a visit to Crater Lake last year and raved about it. She suggested the trip, and reaching out to Summertooth (who lives in Oregon) if he had any information on it and would like to meet up. Dfinney expressed interest as well once she heard about it. So that’s how it happened.
Before going any further on the trip, I need to say that Summertooth did nearly all of the work on planning and executing this trip. Pretty much all we (meaning me and Jennifer) had to do was book flights and a hotel for our last night before our flight. The rest was handled by my buddy Summertooth.
He booked the Airbnb we stayed at, he picked us up at the Portland airport, he chauffeured us around the entire trip. Meaning two days of driving to Crater Lake and back which was over 90 miles each way. He also took us on a very extensive coastal tour on Friday on our way back to Portland hitting three lighthouses and other cool stuff as well. Among other things in between the mentioned above. He is an awesome friend and a great guy.
Our flight left New Jersey at 6:02am, landing in Portland at 9:53am. We started our four hour journey to Medford, Oregon. Along the way, we stopped in Eugene, Oregon right by Oregon University to have something to eat. We decided on burgers at a place named Bo & Vine.
The burgers were solid, very crispy like a smash burger style, with fresh cut French fries. The picture above was the burger I had “The Rodeo” which had bacon, hand fried onions, cheddar cheese and their rodeo sauce. It was tasty.
A few hours later we arrived in Medford at our Airbnb which was very nice. Three bedrooms, an ear in kitchen (which was rather large), a good sized living room and a game room located in the garage. Dfinney arrive via flight from Seattle to Medford shortly after. We settled in, got some supplies and snacks and planned our Crater Lake rim drive the following day.
Our journey to Crater Lake started quite early the following day, 7am local time. As stated above it was over 90 miles each way to the lake. It’s pretty much a ride that is blanketed by mountains and trees. We chose the main entrance to start the journey.
I am going to share many pictures of Crater Lake with you in this post, and not one of them actually does a Justice on just how amazing it truly is in person. Where we came in was where the one lodge/hotel is located in the actual park. These rooms are booked over a year in advance. No chance of getting one of the thirty rooms available. Plus they are ridiculously expensive.
Here is our rim drive….
They have a trolley tour that takes you to parts of the rim but not the entire thing.
Now back to Crater Lake….
I used the compass that is built into my IPhone to see just how high up we actually were. At the highest point we drove was 7,610 feet above sea level.
Now more rim drive pictures….
On our way out there was a waterfall on the side of the road across from Crater Lake. It was pretty tall, my guess would be over 150 feet tall easily.
It was an amazing, but very long day. Nobody felt like doing much of anything that night. So we made a quick meal, had a few drinks and called it a night. We had our Crater Lake boat tour the next day.
Our boat tour was scheduled for 1:15pm, so we slept in if you can call it that. We made a great breakfast and headed back to Crater Lake for our tour. We went to a different entrance today which was much closer to where our boat tour was.
In order to get to the boat you have to take a two mile walk down the hill. It’s not overly hard, but not for the faint of heart. There are quite a few parts that are fairly steep. Getting down wasn’t bad, but climbing back up could be a challenge for some.
Here are some of the views from the trail down…
Now before I go any further…
I must preface that doing the boat tour is an absolute MUST in my opinion. You see things that aren’t possible to see driving the rim.
These pictures are amazing, but nothing like in person. The water is see through and a deep cobalt blue. It is 100% drinkable. They actually fill empty water bottles if you have them with you.
There are two waterfalls inside Crater Lake which you can only see by boat. They are a little hidden by growth, but they are fairly tall.
The boat tour takes you right around Phantom Island which is pictured from afar in some of the earlier photos. Here are some close ups from the boat.
The island is just over 500 feet long. It looks like the shell of an old pirate ship if you look at it closely.
Just as we go to the island it started to rain then hale. Yes hale!!! The size of peas hale. Luckily our captain steered us out of the storm cloud to our next stop.
Here is some hale on my girlfriends hoodie…
Which was the Pumice Castle. This is a pumice formation from the eruption that has so much iron in it that it has oxidized a bright orange. This also can only truly be viewed by boat.
The structure is nearly 500 feet wide and over 60 feet tall.
On the other side of the Phantom Ship (island) is a sister island called “Witch Island”. We went right in between the two islands, it was quite cool.
Here are some water shots….
I love the cloud reflection in these photos.
Love them
We then climbed back up the two miles and thousand foot incline to drive the 90 plus miles back to our Airbnb. It was pizza night, we were all shot. Beers and pizza. We did get a beautiful sunset from our place that night.
I won’t bore you with the next day, I posted about it already. We visited historic Ashland. Go read it.
Our final day was a very long journey up the Oregon coastline back to Portland. Our first stop was supposed to be at a sea lion cave. We didn’t see any sea lions there but did see two grey whales playing in the water.
Here are some shots of the coast on our way to the first lighthouse.
Our first lighthouse was the Cape Meares Lighthouse. I will tell you that getting to all of these lighthouses is a journey. None of them were under a half a mile walk from where you can park.
On our way to the next lighthouse we did a pit stop at a place called “The Devil’s Churn”. It’s an inlet of rock that when the tide is high, or during storms the water comes smashing through the rocks. We weren’t there for that but it was still really cool.
Now onward to our next stop. The Yaquina Head Lighthouse. This is the tallest lighthouse on the Oregon coast. While it is the tallest in Oregon, we have several much taller on the coast of New Jersey.
I’m going to have to stop here I’m not allowed to add anymore pictures. I keep getting errors….