Oregon Fly Drive Destination
Crater Lake

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Crater Lake National Park

Crater Lake was the target of the fly-drive for our 2002 holiday i.e. we were driving from San Francisco to Crater Lake and back, seeing other stuff along the way. I made the potential mistake of focussing very high expectations on seeing this natural wonder. Its easy for reality to fail to live up to your dreams, thankfully for me, Crater Lake did not let me down and it was every bit as magnificent as I had hoped. We have seen some of the most breathtaking sights in North America on our travels (as these web pages testify), Crater Lake is one of the top few in my opinion.

Little did we know when we planned our trip that we would be so lucky that our travel plans just happened to get us to the top of Crater Lake by around 11.00 a.m. The Ranger at the park gate told us that there was some haze which would get a lot worse in the afternoon (he was not joking !).

In summer (we visited in August) a temperature inversion can form which results in thick fog on the lake surface. You could clearly see across the 6 mile lake for virtually all of our visit. However, the fog appeared with a rush at 15.00 - 16-00 hrs and prevented you even seeing the lake at the foot of the cliff below you. People who were just arriving as this happened must have been bitterly dissappointed.

There is a road around the rim of the crater that is around 30 miles long. Leave yourself time to drive this and pause at the many scenic overlooks for views that really have to be seen to be believed.

Site visitor post
It's worth mentioning that the road round the lake is closed by snow in winter and can open quite late. Reopening was some weeks off when I visited in late May 2002
David

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