Crater Lake, Oregon

I'm hoping that if I do this right, I'll be able to publish our summer vacation in the correct order. Here's to hoping. We traveled with the Sargents this year--we both wanted to check out some new sites. We drove through Bend and down to Crater Lake, Oregon. It was so fun for the kids to go together on this trip.

Crater Lake is huge and the hiking is outstanding. There are so many different types of landscapes to observe, from solid lava fields to wooded forests to deep, suicidal gorges. It was even more interesting than I anticipated.

 Family portrait in front of Wizard Island. It's not a "normal" island. This is actually a new cone to the volcano that surfaced after the initial implosion. This is also the point when the kids finally believed me that they were going to need their sweatshirts on this trip.

Sara and I breathing in the fresh air. The kids were screaming in the background about a mouse living near the base of a tree. They were running around trying to catch it/not catch it. You also can't see that Shane is out moving around. He had a mangled ankle and was sans boot for the first time in weeks. He managed to hobble up the steep to check out the view from this point of the lake.

 100% overcast and still pretty amazing. The lake has no outlet. It was filled completely by snow melt and rain accumulation. The depths are incredible hundreds of feet deep. There are some fish and salamanders, but no boats are allowed on the lake. It has to be because it is a wicked hike down to the water.

 A closer look at Wizard Island. The cone.

Our main goal was to wear the kids out at every chance--it wasn't really hard because they just wanted to run, run, run. There are so many large trees to climb on, it's easy to forget that trees aren't just for landscaping.
 One of our shorter hikes took us through a large meadow. The hikes were perfectly shaded. We couldn't have asked for better weather. Tyler helped Louisa on most of the hikes. He was so good to make sure that she could get through the slippery rocks and see the flowers on the guide book.

 Exploring with dad.

 We never really knew where the hikes were going to go, or what we would see on them. This was an incredible view of a massive gorge. You could hear water at the bottom, but we never dared get close enough to the edge to see it. The gorge appeared to go on for miles.

 Sara and Shane.

 Jack practicing his balance on something he shouldn't be standing on.

Jack with the Phantom Ship in the background. A large rock formation that juts out of the lake. After we left Crater Lake we headed down to a motel outside of Medford, Oregon.