9/8/2010
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| Red Lion Inn's Hot Pancake Dispenser! |
Clay was up first this morning and told me to get up at 6am. I showered and we packed up and loaded the car… in the rain! We drove around to the Red Lion Inn lobby building to check out and have the $4.99pp Get Roarin’ Breakfast. This was worth it because of the pancake vending machine! Did you ever even imagine such a thing? You put your plate under a roller on one end and push a button to order 2 pancakes. (You really can’t have just one! One is not an option.) In about 1.5 minutes the first edge of pancake appears and slowly rolls out and flops onto your plate, quickly followed by the second pancake. I had pancakes! I also had a sausage patty, a bacon slice, water and a coffee with cocoa mix. Clay had orange juice, scrambled eggs, potatoes, bacon, sausage, toast, a Danish and a cinnamon roll; no pancakes.
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| Covered Bridge Museum near Dexter/Lowell, OR |
Then we got an early start on our 2.5 hour drive to Crater Lake, Oregon. We started out southbound on I5 to Hwy. 58 to to Hwy. 97 to Hwy. 138. It sounds complicated, but it wasn't because there aren't that many roads to Crater Lake.
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| Tunnel! Look at that guardrail! |
The drive was very scenic. It rained off and on the whole way, at the highest elevation we could see snowflakes on the windshield. We climbed to over 5000 feet and saw rivers, lakes, a rainbow, water falls, a covered bridge, a dam, a deer with fuzzy antlers and miles of wildly curving roads and thousands of evergreen trees. Needless to say I drove again today.
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| Rainbow over Odell Lake, OR |
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| Hwy. 138 - That is a straight road! |
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| We're here! |
We arrived at the North Entrance to Crater Lake National Park at around 10am. Check in time at the Lodge is 4pm, so we took the long drive around the East Rim. The ranger who sold us our pass told us to be careful as visibility was poor today! She said that it was rainy inside the rim. Well, she was right and wrong. The sun came and went. Rain came and went and turned into sleet and into snow and back into rain and then sun again. The high today is about 46 degrees F. It is quite comfortable when the sun comes through and quite miserable when the sleet is blowing sideways, under the shade, or even inside of a cloud. We are satisfied anyway. It would have been nice to be able to use the rocking chairs on the back porch of the lodge, but they are soaked. The NPS forecasters are not predicting that it will clear out tomorrow morning either. Too bad. Still hoping for a good sunset and sunrise.
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| Pumice desert along Crater Lake North Entry |
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| Our 1st view of Crater Lake with Wizard Island |
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| Beautiful Crater Lake, Oregon |
Around 12:30pm to 1pm we ran into sun, so we stopped and sat on the wall overlooking Pumice Castle and Phantom Ship and had a little picnic of cherries, Nabs, almonds, Raisinets and water. As we sat there we watched a cloud come over the high part of the rim on the opposite side. We wondered if it would slip on down or burn off in the sun and dissipate. We sat and watched as it dropped down all the way to the surface of the lake and darkened its way across towards us. Clay kept saying it would burn off, but I guessed as it reached the midpoint that we had about 3-5 minutes to clear out. We abandoned post shortly after a tiny ground squirrel ran under our legs and we started to get wet. It was pretty amazing and spectacular. Crater Lake is 5 miles in diameter. There are no inlets or outlets. It is 1943 feet deep and the 7th deepest lake in the world and the deepest in the USA. Wizard Island on the west side of the lake is a cinder cone that rises 760 feet above the water and at the top is a crater 300 feet across and 90 feet deep. How amazing is that? It’s a small crater at the top of a small extinct volcano inside the crater of a huge extinct volcano.
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| Here comes the rain! |
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| Uh-oh! |
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| Wildlife! |
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| More wildlife... |
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| Phantom ship rock formation in Crater Lake |
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| Clay and Debbie (and Bob) at Crater Lake, OR |
We reached the Rim Village about 2pm and went into the Steel Visitor’s Center and watched the 18 minute film about the creation of the crater and the park. Then we drove on to the Rim Village Gift Shop and Café. We walked around the amazing viewing area there and then drove on to the Lodge.
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| There it is! |
We arrived at about 3pm and we were able to check in so we did. We got room 212, a deluxe lake view room which is what we had reserved and paid for months ago. It’s view is partially blocked by trees, but that may be true of most of the rooms. We brought in our luggage and checked out the room, then went back out because it looked out our windows like the sun was out.
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| What a view for these little guys! |
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| Just spectacular! |
We opened the back door off the Great Hall and got a face full of slushy rain. We zipped up and walked down the little paved and benched lookout area back there anyway and we were rewarded with a rainbow touching down right in the lake. Amazing! It was a snowbow! We did not hurry back in, but once back in we dried out in rocking chairs in front of a huge fireplace with gas logs burning. There were waitstaff wandering offering to serve snacks and hot and alcoholic beverages, but we passed to save our appetites for dinner.
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| a snowbow! |
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| Wizard Island, Crater Lake Oregon |
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| Drying out and warming up in Crater Lake Lodge Great Hall |
We have a 5pm reservation and I have to go now to wake Clay from his nap and get down to the dining room. More later. Oh, there is no Internet here, though oddly enough when we drove through Mazama Camping Village they had wi-fi symbols up along with restrooms, etc. and that hardly seems right given the price premium at the lodge. It isn’t like they don’t have it, there is a wi-fi network up and running in the Lodge, they just aren’t allowing guests access! So we’ll have to post after we get back to Portland tomorrow!
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| Our Crater Lake sunset |
Back from dinner and it has at last stopped precipitating. But, we are still socked in with low clouds so we just got a few moments of the faintest few splotches of pink on the lake. Bummer! Still have fingers crossed for a brilliant sunrise over the lake. When we went out after dinner the temperature had dropped to 35 degrees F and even though it was no longer blowing or wet, it was cold!
Dinner in the dining room was good, not great and very expensive. Over $120 for the 2 of us with 2 drinks, 3 courses and tip. Clay couldn’t decide and let the waitress lead him astray with the lamb recommendation. He immediately regretted it. But he ate it all and part of my Classic Chicken Dijon with a polenta cake and braised greens. I had French onion soup to start and it was not great, but hot soup on a cold wet day is always good. I had flourless chocolate torte with raspberry sauce for dessert. Clay had a salad with Marionberry vinaigrette and Gorgonzola to start and triple berry crumble with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Clay told me to make sure I came back here and added that he paid $4.95 extra for a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the $7.95 cobbler! I had the Crater Lake Lodge Private Reserve Label Pinot Gris to drink and Clay had an IPA draft beer from some microbrewery in Ashland, OR, sorry don’t remember the name.
So, anyway that was our big finale vacation day. Not a total washout, but less than hoped for. Tomorrow we hope for excellent weather here in Crater Lake and then we will drive out on a different route before returning to I-5 for the run back to Portland. We have a room reserved tomorrow night at the Airport Red Lion Inn and we have no plans for anything in Portland. We will have to see how time and weather are if we do anything else here, or there, or between here and there. Good night.
