Crater Lake

We have lived in Oregon for almost 11 years but until recently had never been to Crater Lake.  It is a good drive south of us and whenever we would go somewhere for the weekend I always wanted to go to the beach.  Joe has wanted to see Crater Lake for a long time, so when Father's Day rolled around I decided that a trip to see Crater Lake was going to be his gift.

The problem with going Father's Day weekend, was that I really wanted to make it a long weekend since we were going to have to do some driving.  My schedule is perfect for long weekends, but Joe had just started his new job and didn't have any time he could take off.  So, last June, I randomly picked a weekend in September that made reservations for a house rental in Sunriver.

We had never been to Sunriver either but I am so glad I just booked the trip.  The area was absolutely beautiful and it reminded me a lot of Western Montana.  We stayed in a great house and had access to a ton of fun.  We rented bikes one morning, including a trailer for Taelin to ride in. (She insisted Joe "go faster and faster".)  There was a great outdoor pool and an afternoon full of sunshine and vitamin D.  One day, while Taelin and Joe napped, I just went out and shopped at all the little stores, which was also great fun.

But, the point of it all (besides being together, which I guess is really the whole point...) was our trip to see Crater Lake.  We reserved a whole day for driving down and doing whatever it was that we would want to do.  I packed up the cooler with the typical picnic stuff and off we drove.  Once we got a little closer, we told Taelin we were driving up a volcano and were going to see a big blue lake. Well, she ran with the whole "voltano" thing and made up a lovely little song that we were singing the rest of the day.  She also kept telling us that she could feel it shake and that is was going to go BOOM like the "voltanos" in Dora.  Those "voltanos" however erupt colorful balls and had a hard time convincing Taelin that we really didn't want the volcano to go BOOM.

We made a couple of stops as we drove part way around it.  We didn't do any real kind of hiking because we have a two year old and Joe's back/leg is currently giving him quite a bit of trouble.  We did take some time to look around though and it was honestly breathtaking.  It was hard to really get the scope of how big the lake really was.  At one point, we stopped to look and could see across to where we had just been.  Everything looked so small over there...but when we had just been over there, everything seemed huge.  It was just immense.

We didn't stay for very long (maybe an hour), but we stopped for a picnic on our way back and Taelin and Joe did manage to find some snow to play in.  We had a wonderful, wonderful mini-vacation and will definitely return to the area with our kayaks next summer. (Just for clarification, we won't kayak in Crater Lake, but there were lots of other lakes close by that would be perfect!)

It is really too bad that it has taken us this long to get down there, but I am so glad we finally did.  I am once again finding myself so ever grateful for this list, which is helping me do the thing that we have "always" wanted to do.