Monday! We’d been away from home for over a week!
Crater Lake was one of the suggestions from the Ever Brilliant Catherine to which I said “Sure!”, but didn’t really know what I was agreeing to. What a FANTASTIC blind yes that was! It was another GORGEOUS day, and the drive from Catherine’s house was a little under 2 hours. (Yes, I drove. 🙂 )
It is best that I allow the experts to describe exactly what Crater Lake is: <<Crater Lake, formed by the now-collapsed volcano, Mount Mazama. Wizard Island is a cinder cone near the western edge of the lake. The Rim Drive, a road surrounding the lake, offers views of the park’s volcanic formations.>> And it was SO COOL!
Literally! The air temperature was about 60 degrees at the Rim, which has an elevation of about 7,800 ft. Whoo! We began at the Visitor’s Center, after being admitted to this National Park FOR FREE, thanks to Miss Margaret’s admission card, and the promotion, 
4th Graders everywhere in the country are admitted FREE (along with up to 4 adults!) to every National Park in the country!! (Look into it, 4th graders & families!!) 🙂
In the Visitor’s Center there is a WONDERFUL bas relief map of the entire area:
And … there was SNOW up there on the rim! We’d seen quite a bit of it on the last part of the drive up, but I was quite bowled over by its presence on July 10th!
Lulu enjoyed the snow bank! (even after JUST drying out from the jet boat LOL)
We witnessed some kids having a snowball fight! LOL
We saw a group of youngsters being instructed in how to become a Junior Ranger via a packet of activities. Our Margaret completed the packet on her own (OK, we MAY have helped a tiny bit!), and earned her Crater Lake Junior Ranger badge, too! 😀
The scenery at Crater Lake is stunning at every turn. I will let the photos speak for themselves:
Catherine packed a terrific picnic lunch of fried chicken, sandwiches, snacks & fruit. Amazing!! We enjoyed it while sitting on the wall at the rim, enjoying the scenery! But … here’s my question: Why do so many people think it’s hilarious to stand on the wall (with a 700 foot drop directly behind them) and pretend to fall?? LOL Thank you for the lunch, Catherine!! It was delicious!
Catherine & Gerry hiked back to the car to put away the picnic fare, while Miss Margaret and I walked further around the rim to Alice Mullaly’s favorite spot, the porch of Crater Lake Lodge, a hotel located right there! The porch has dozens of rocking chairs that they allow the general public to park it, and, if you wish order a cocktail. (I did not. Neither did 9-year-old Margaret 😉 ) She looked pretty happy in her rocker, however!
We continued working on her Junior Ranger packet, and pretty soon Catherine & Gerry returned.
We asked a stranger to take our photo … she snapped this one, but insisted that we shift to our right, and into the sun, … with a MUCH more pleasing result:
Sunlight. Lake. Everybody. Lulu. Check!
What a truly wonderful remedy to the craziness of the jetboats, especially for Gerry. It was beautiful and relaxing day!
Alice and Carl prepared dinner for us that evening, and after dinner, Gerry was asked to play piano, to which he was happy to oblige. One of the sweetest moments I’ve witnessed in a very long time happened when Larry dug out a song he’d written for Alice for their wedding, and Gerry played it for them. Not a dry eye in the house! 🙂
On our last evening in Oregon, we joined around the dining room table, and formed teams to play a fierce board game, called “Ticket to Ride” (“No matter where I go, I can’t get away from trains,” said NJ Transit employee, Gerry DeMan LOL):
This game is pretty intense, in which teams try to build railroad paths between cities. There’s a whole lot more to it (and I don’t pretend to FULLY understand it LOL), but it was quite the competitive match! I was teamed with Catherine’s dad, Larry, who was MORE than determined to win. As part of the strategy is to try and figure out where other teams are going, and BLOCK them, the only way way to communicate ideas for moves/strategies was via paper & pencil. Larry was fairly hilarious: Instead of writing something like, “Block by taking Dallas”, he’d write, “Well, I’m thinking that we should take into consideration that Catherine and Gerry must be going to Dallas, therefore we should try to block them there.” LOLOL Needless to say, we ran out of paper. 🙂
As much as I hated for our time in Oregon to end, it was time to hit the hay, and gear up for the next day, when we would embark on the last leg of our trip: San Francisco!