Crater Lake

So today we reached Crater Lake, the main reason we travelled up to Oregon.
I had never imagined the crater could be so immense, or the view of its abrupt mountainous rim so beautiful.
The whole thing is so dramatic and picturesque that its first sight knocked the wind out of me. Forced me to sit, silent and humbled.
We were lucky that it was very sunny and so the lake in the crater al the way down below was a rich mediteranian blue-green. The sky was bright blue and the gigantic pure white clouds stark against it.
The whole thing must have extended to almost 180° of the horizon, and as we drove around the rim road, each stop offered us a new and original perspective.


It took us over 2hrs to cover the 30 miles we stopped so many times. A couple times, looking away from the crater opened up the whole surrounding country to us, possibly as far 100 miles, whole ranges of mountains obscuring the horizon far far away.


We then drove back down and South through the massive plain, and finally along Upper Klamath Lake. We had high yellow hills on our left, train tracks just below on our right, and past that was the wide placid lake. We stopped for the night south of it, in a post-industrial and now seemingly deserted town called Klamath Falls.
Not the cheeriest or prettiest of places, but after a good many hours on the bike, the hotel’s promise of a swimming pool was too much to resist.


Photos day 10