Our 33 Day, 6731 Mile Road Trip–part 7

When we first began planning our trip we had discussed the possibility of visiting Crater Lake National Park.  But, everything I read indicated that the roads coming from the north and or northwest would possibly still have snow.  And, as I checked on-line I found that the road around the lake had only a limited area open.  But, all reports were that the weather was nice so we decided we would make that side trip.  We left our son’s home about noon of May 7th, the 16th day of our road trip and drove south to Central Point, Oregon where we spent the night at a Pilot Travel Center.

By 7:00 A.M. the next morning we were on the way to Crater Lake.  We stopped a few miles further along by a rushing mountain stream to eat our breakfast.  As we neared the park we began seeing huge piles of snow that had been pushed off of the highway.  We found that there was still a lot of snow at Crater Lake and that was why much of the road around the park was closed.  They feel good if they have the road open all the way around the lake by the 4th of July.  It is a big job removing the average 44 feet of snow they receive each winter.

We had to climb over the snow banks to get to where we could view the lake.  We felt blessed because at least 50% of the time in winter and spring one can not see the lake for clouds and fog.  Here are a couple of photos of the lake.

We hadn’t stopped by the visitor’s center at the park on the way in so decided to do so on our way back out.  The ranger we talked to said that they didn’t have a lot of snow left.  To us it looked as if they did.  This picture was taken in the parking lot of the visitor’s center—the snow was in the middle of the lot.

We were unable to use the main entrance to the visitor’s center as it was still blocked by snow.  We were told that during the winter the snow is completely over the top of the building.

After leaving the park we headed on our way toward California.  By traveling south-southwest we were able to get back to I-5 at Weed, California.  On the way we were in sight of Mt. Shasta for many miles.  Mt. Shasta is 14,162 feet above sea level and 11,000 feet from it’s base to the summit.

We stopped for the night of this our 17th day of our road trip at the Pilot Travel Center in Dunnigan, California, just north of Sacramento.  The next day we headed for Yosemite National Park—we’ll cover that in the next installment.