Crater Lake National Park - "Crater and Carter have the same letters!"

We left our campground early this morning, with the trailer attached to the pickup since we were heading on down the road. That made parking tricky as this day's destination was another national park. Carter already liked this park because she noticed that "Crater" had all the same letters as "Carter"--they're just arranged differently. We started the morning with a quick hike that started at the visitor center on the south entrance of Crater Lake National Park. 

This was the wildflower trail, and of course Denisa wanted to go on this hike. We were looking for the bright pink monkey flowers.

We didn't have to look far, because these bright flowers were everywhere!

Carter wasn't a big fan of this trail, as she got her shoes muddy and then wet. We also stopped in at the visitor center to watch the park movie and got her national park passport book stamped. That's two stamps in that new book!

We also picked up the Junior Ranger book, and found out that she needed to complete seven pages to get her badge for Crater Lake. When we told the ranger how tricky it was to find a parking spot for the trailer at 9:00 a.m., we assured him that it would be impossible to return for that badge. So Mark was deputized and given authority to monitor Carter's booklet progress. In the meantime, Denisa found an unusual cardinal flower that begged to be photographed.

The national park film taught us that Crater Lake was actually in a caldera formed when a 12,000-foot mountain collapsed after a major eruption. Some debris in the middle of the caldera formed Wizard Island that we could see from our first view point.

When first discovered, Crater Lake was named "Deep Blue Lake." It's still a good descriptive name.

We found a parking spot at the Watchman Overlook, and got our first good view of how deep and how blue Crater Lake was.

We knew that parking would be a problem when we saw cars parked along the side of the road when we were still a half-mile away from our next destination. We wanted to do the hike to Cleetwood Cove, but the parking lot was full, as well as every inch around it for a half mile. Mark managed to make a u-turn and found a spot to pull off the road close to a mile away from the trail head.

We held on tight to Carter's hand for the walk along the road next to that steep cliff. But we had beautiful deep blue lake views the entire way!

We were working on questions in the junior ranger booklet while we enjoyed the views from the top.

We had wandered to another of God's wonders!

On our extended walk, we were entertained by swarms of lovely butterflies. They were everywhere! We did a little google research to find out these were Tortoiseshell butterflies. They have population booms every few years, and 2025 was one of those years.

Once we reached the trailhead, it was a steep walk down to the water. Mark was the pack mule, carrying everything we need for a hike and a swim.

The switchbacks continued for 1.1 miles as we got closer and closer to that royal blue water. During the walk down, you couldn't help but dread having to make that hike back up the hill. We developed a game of rating how tired people looked while they were hiking back up. We saw quite a few 10 out of 10 exhausted hikers, and we wondered if we would get that same rating on our walk back up.

Once at water level, we were faced with the rocky shore line. The large boulders made it very hard to move away from the most crowded area. But we managed to get further than most of the crowd to dip our toes in the water.

This is the only place on this big lake that visitors are allowed to get into the water. This water was remarkably pure and they work hard to keep it that way. Most lakes are formed on a river, and therefore get whatever mud or pollutants come down the river. But Crater Lake is in a giant bowl formed from the volcanic caldera, and is filled only with rain water or snow melt. We can tell you that the water was as cold as snow even on the last day of July. 

It took great courage to swim in that cold water!

This chance to swim at Crater Lake won't be available to future visitors for a while. The Cleetwood Cove trail was closed last week because of trail damage from a large rain. They are closing the trail very soon, and it will be closed for 2026, 2027, and 2028 summers to completely redo the trail. 

The last time we visited Crater Lake, we didn't know to wear swim suits. But back in 2021 that didn't stop Mark from jumping off the high cliff in his hiking pants. Carter wasn't interested in the high dive, so we stayed in our rocky section. There was a boat in the background because the boat tours had been postponed because of the gathering clouds. When we saw a flash of lightning, we hustled out of the water.

There was a mass exodus as it started to rain. It looked like we would be making that dreaded hike up the hill in the rain.

Then it started hailing. What!?! We picked up the pace of our walk. We stopped to find a dry spot when it rained the hardest. It was quite an adventure! But the good news was that the weather kept our minds off the steepness of the trail, and we were actually surprised when we suddenly found ourselves at the top.

Mark made the extra walk to the pickup, and picked up the girls at the trailhead. We found a nice wide pull-out and went inside the trailer to change out of our wet clothes and ate a picnic lunch. Even with the inconvenience of finding big parking spaces, it was nice to have our home along with us when we visited this deep blue lake.

It was chilly after that cold water swim and the hail storm. So we changed into our warmest clothes. Carter thought that none of her friends back home would be wearing jeans and a jacket in July today!

We drove the trailer to a Boondockers Welcome camp site about an hour north of Crater Lake to spend the night. Carter got the seven pages completed in her junior ranger book, and Deputy Mark awarded her the junior ranger badge. Carter wanted to take pictures, so we got a rare photo of the two of us inside our little trailer. It's smaller than our motor home, and we have learned that it was a little tight in the alley between the kitchen and the dinette. It's even tighter with a third passenger on board, but we've all had a good time. This was our last evening in the trailer for the three of us together, and we had several raucous games of Yahtzee to celebrate. It was a great adventure at Crater Lake and we'll always remember that "Crater and Carter have the same letters!"

Collecting Momentos to Remember the Precious Moments

Our granddaughter stayed in the trailer with us for several days on the way to our son's wedding. Even though we have grown accustomed to the two-hour time difference since we've been in the Pacific time zone, Carter was definitely still on central time. She woke up at 5 a.m., and quickly pointed out that was 7 a.m. back home. So we got to see the sun rise over the pond in our campground, and played on the campground playground before anyone else was awake. She had started a trip treasures bag, so she was looking for a momento from each activity on our trip. We couldn't pick up any rocks in the national park, but she was holding a piece of a "volcano rock" she found this morning to remind her of all the volcanoes we saw yesterday at Lassen Volcanic National Park. What a great momento to remember our time amongst all those volcanoes and lava tubes!

With that early wake-up, we were on the road earlier than expected. It wasn't long before we had Mount Shasta in our windshield view as we headed north across California.

Our first destination was the middle falls of the McCloud River Loop. We were early enough to get a parking place for the pickup and trailer in this popular parking lot. We got our first view from the top shortly after we arrived.

Then we started the walk down through the forest to see it closer. Carter was great at helping Gram down the downhill trail. She was pretending to be the camp leader, while Mark was the teenage camp counselor, and Denisa was the seven-year-old camper. We even sang camp songs on the way to the waterfall.

While this is a popular swimming hole during hot summer days, we had it all to ourselves at 7:30 in the morning.

We had wandered into another of God's wonders!

The lighting was great at that hour, and this would be one of our favorite pictures of the trip--with Grandude and Carter in the sunlight on the rock looking at the Middle Falls.

Mark is a rock scrambler, and it looks like Carter has inherited his mountain goat genes.

We planned to swim at this popular spot . . .

so we tested the water with our toes.

But we found that our toes got numb quickly from this water that was a combination of the winter snow melt and a cold water spring. Nope, none of us were interested in jumping in and swimming under that waterfall.

So we headed back up the trail, looking for a momento of the waterfall trip. We found a pine cone that fit well into the treasure bag. It's a good thing that the camp leader could help our little camper up that hill!

Our next stop was the town of Mount Shasta, California. We went in search of a Shasta cola to drink with our picnic lunch. This was complicated by the fact that we had to find parking for the pickup and trailer at any grocery store where we shopped. But we parked with a view of Mount Shasta just down the street. It took two stops at two different grocery stores before we found our lunch drink.

Don't tell her parents, but we drank orange Shasta with our lunch of local barbecue in Mount Shasta, California. That's a nice momento to add to our trip.

It wasn't long before we crossed the state line into Oregon. The sign was hard to read with all the stickers that had been added to it. This was our seventh state of this trip. We also made a stop at the Oregon welcome center. We've been to many of these state centers along the highways as we entered new states. They are a great place to pick up some information and a new map. But we didn't know that if you visited with a cute seven-year-old you were given all kinds of momentos. We got free post cards, a bag of the state stone (sun rocks), stickers, a button, and a tourist bag, in addition to our map and guidebooks. Those sun rocks made a nice momento for Carter's treasure bag.

We set up the trailer in the Water Wheel RV Park and made dinner. The host at the park mentioned a nice kayaking spot, and that's where we headed for the evening.

We found that we weren't the only ones floating on the water this evening. We found a mother duck . . .

and her adolescent ducklings behind her.

We found that our new inflatable kayak was (barely) big enough for three passengers. Denisa got a bit of a break, as Carter took over some of the paddling in the front.

We floated right by a gaggle of geese on Spring Creek. This perfectly clear creek was just eight miles north of our campground, and was a cool way to spend our evening.

That clear water made it easy to look for another momento--like the colored rocks on the creek bed. Even though we tried over and over to bring up a special rock with our paddles, they always slipped off. The water was too cold to get in to retrieve a rock. So Grandude was the hero, getting his long arm wet finding Carter just the perfect red rock for her treasure bag.

We collected another day of momentos to help us remember the precious moments of our time together on this trip!

We Picked up our Special Guest

We were up at 5:00 a.m. this morning, because we were driving to Reno, Nevada, to pick up a special guest. The sun was not yet peeking over the hill-tops when we were on the road.

The valleys were filled with fog as we headed east back towards Nevada. In this remote section of California, we had absolutely no phone service anywhere for an hour's drive around us. So we had to time our drive to be where we could make a phone call at exactly 7:00 a.m. Why?!? We were trying to get camping reservations for our visit to Olympic National Park in two weeks. They open reservations for one campground six months early, then another campground two weeks early. We really needed a spot in Fairholme Campground in Olympic National Park in two weeks! So we stopped where we had a good phone signal in the town of Susanville, and Mark opened the rec.gov website. We had already chosen our favorite site and confirmed that it was available. Denisa counted down the seconds to 7:00 a.m. sharp Pacific Time (when the reservations open), and Mark pushed the request button. What?!?! It was already taken? Impossible! We have to say that playing the game to get a spot in a national park campground is not a fun game. All of the campsites were filled within 5 seconds after 7:00 when they opened. After all that careful planning, we weren't successful this morning. (Update: Mark continued to check the rec.gov web site periodically. Several days later he found an opening at Fairholme campground. Someone had cancelled their reservation they made six months ago, and he snagged it before anyone else found it. We only got two nights, instead of the three that we hoped for, but we were not homeless two weeks from now.)

Our moods couldn't be soured with that failed attempt at a campground reservation, because our special guest was in the air and headed our way. Our granddaughter Carter, and our daughter-in-law Jordan were flying to Reno! Jordan was coming for a medical continuing education class, so we were picking up Carter to travel the last leg of our journey to our son's wedding.

They were both up this morning at 3:00 a.m. Central Time, to make the flights out of Kansas City. If that sounds early, remember that's 1:00 a.m. Pacific Time! When they landed in Reno, Nevada, at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Time, they had already been awake a very long time. After sitting through two plane rides, Carter was ready to go hiking! But then we had the drive from Reno to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Our closest route took us through some road construction that resulted in 5 stops for one-way traffic. That added another hour to our trip. We were really ready for a hike by the time we got into the national park! 

Our first stop was the visitor center to buy a national park passport book for Carter. Denisa wished she would have gotten one fifty national park visits ago, and we won't let the same thing happen to our grandchildren! We got the first official national park stamp, even though as first-timers we accidentally got the date stamped upside down. Maybe that will be a new tradition to always stamp the date wrong. We bought a stuffed wolf for little brother Eli, and picked up the Junior Ranger book. Carter has to complete four pages in the book to get the junior ranger patch from Lassen Volcanic Park.

Our next stop was to Emerald Lake--right along the park road.

Then we were just hoping for a parking place so we could take the park's most popular hike to Bumpass Hell. Mark and Denisa took this hike yesterday, but we were anxious for Carter to see it. She was most impressed with the snow that was still on this high trail in July.

But she used all that pent-up energy from a plane ride and a car drive when we got started on the hike. She was happy to be the hike leader.

She loved the big trees, and we had a beautiful day for exploring a national park. We were looking for things mentioned in her junior ranger book. We needed to find rocks that were black, striped, broken, sparkling, pink, smooth . . . so we could check them off in her book.

The highlight of this trail was the valley where all the geothermal features were clustered. This was like visiting a smaller version of Yellowstone. But Carter was forcing a smile because she thought it smelled TERRIBLE here.

She hated the sulfur smell belching out of the fumaroles and mud pots. She was just glad that Gram had a strawberry sucker in her pack that she could hold under her nose to block the sulfur smell.

She licked and sniffed that sucker all the way through Bumpass Hell.

Our favorite part was the blue-green water pool steaming behind us. But it was hard to concentrate when everything smelled so bad.

Then we started the uphill hike out of that stinky valley. It was harder to be enthusiastic about hiking when it was uphill and you're getting tired.

But we talked about volcanoes, and it was fun to see the remnants of the volcanoes that had erupted in this mountain range.

She was a trooper, and by the end of the hike we deemed her a certified national park hiker! She said, "My thighs are huge!" after more than three miles on the trail.

We stopped again at the snow patch at the beginning of the hike for a picture with Mount Lassen and Lake Anne in the background.

That slippery snow tripped up Carter, and Grandude took a picture of her falling in the snow.

She wanted a picture of Grandude also falling in the snow, and he quickly obliged.

Then we got the classic shot of her throwing a July snow ball at the camera.

We collected more information about the trees and rocks to finish up more pages in that junior ranger book. Was this a fir or a hemlock?

By this time Carter had been awake for 14 hours since her early morning wake-up time. Besides that, she had covered a lot of ground today. We joked about the number of states she had been in today--Kansas, Missouri to the airport, landed in Colorado, then another flight to Nevada, and then we drove her to California. It was a five-state day for our little traveler! We weren't surprised when she fell asleep on our way to our picnic spot at Lake Manzanita.

She was really sleeping good! So we kept driving, because we thought that sleeping was more important than eating right now.

After a good hour's nap, we had arrived to another destination that she had been excited about--The Subway Cave Lava Tube. She woke up with a smile and was ready for another hike. We put on our stylish head lamps and started down the steps into the cave.

This tube was formed during a volcanic eruption. As hot lava ran down the mountain, it cooled faster on the outside. The cooling lava formed the walls of the tube, while the hotter insulated lava continued flowing. That left the tube we were walking into.

It was a pleasant 46 degrees once we got inside the tube.

Subway Cave Lava Tube is 1/3 mile long and it was very dark inside. We all turned off our head lamps, and we couldn't see our hands held right in front of our faces.

Carter was excited and said, "I'm walking where lava was!" Once we got to the end of the 1/3-mile trail, she wanted to do it again--so we did!

As we got to the end of our second lap, it was nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Our 46-degree temperature quickly turned up the heat as we walked back up the stairs into the sunshine.

We made the 14-mile drive back to the campground, and we were glad to see that the weekend crowds had left and it was quiet again.  Carter almost fell asleep again on the short drive back to the trailer. So we cooked a quick dinner and made beds and were in bed by 8:15. That's 10:15 central time. This little girl that was in five states today, and became a certified national park hiker, and a junior ranger, was tired! (and so were her grandparents).