Day 8, Crater Lake NP

Once again we started off our morning off with a delicious continental breakfast. Then, after packing everything back into our travel bags, we hit the road and headed off to Table Rocks.
Table Rocks was neither a state park nor a national park – it was just a recreation area on the side of the road that looked interesting. Just like Redwood National Park, the trail head sign at Table Rocks warned hikers about mountain lions and bears in the area. But Jessie and I didn’t feel threatened enough to look for defense sticks again. The hike up was steeply inclined for the majority of the hike, and we had to take a couple rest stops even though the trail was only 1.5 miles long. Once up to the top though, the ground leveled out into a huge plateau with an amazing view of the farmland and valley below. There were also some trees along the border of the cliff and we walked through the rocky field over to the edge to take some pictures and admire the view. We spent about an hour scrambling around the dirt paths, and looking out over the valley and distant mountains before heading back down to the car.

Our next stop was Rogue River Gorge. The quite popular paved path was only a quarter of a mile long, making it the shortest trail of our vacation so far. It lead us right beside the gorge, which started of as mighty waterfall and plummeted its way downhill, with waves foaming and crashing against the rock walls. After having some guy take a family picture of us, we found ourselves back in the car and on our way to the day’s main attraction, Crater Lake National Park.

Being a National Park, we had to stop at Crater Lake’s Visitor Center for a stamped map. I also bought a couple more postcards to mail back home to my friends. The one thing we really wanted to do in this park was to take a boat ride out to Wizard Island. However, the boat tours required reservations and by the time we reached the ticked booth, the entire day’s and 1/2 of tomorrow's spots had been sold out. Not having the time to stick around for another day, we decided to just drive around the rim of the Crater and admire the views from the lookouts. Crater Lake is without a doubt my favorite NP. The lake is huge, and the water was a deep royal blue color, a shade purer than the cloudless sky ahead. The snow covered mountains that enclosed the lake and the redwood forests made the perfect background for the pictures we took at every overlook. I could have spent the whole day sitting on the stone wall of the lookouts, enjoying the cool summer breeze and gazing out over the park in awe.

Our last stop of the day was Newberry Volcanic National Monument. At first we had trouble finding the entrance to the park because our GPS (who goes by the name Jill) sent us along a dirt road that turned into terrain better served as a dirt bike course than an actual road. Then, once we finally located the road that leads us into the Monument area we could not find the Visitor Center. We ended up having to turn around and drive through a camping area to ask for directions. The guy we asked had lost almost all his teeth, and his directions “It’s the next left…or right down the road” were all but helpful. Then as we literally drove 2 mph out of the camping site, he called out “And slow down!” Despite the awful advice, we managed to find the Visitor Center, were we got a map. The first thing we did was drive up a narrow road to the top of Paulina Peak, where we had a panoramic view of the Caldera lakes. While they were beautiful, the lakes could not hold their own against Crater Lake. We also visited the Obsidian Flow and Paulina Falls. The falls were interesting enough, but with the swarms of mosquitoes flying everywhere we didn’t want to stick around for too long. We snapped a couple pictures and then finished off the day with a meal at a local pizza restaurant before returning to our hotel for the night.