Crater Lake Weekend

We spent this last weekend down at Crater Lake National Park with Deana and Dana. We’d been planning this trip all summer and everyone was super excited. I went for a long run Friday morning and then we loaded up the stuff, picked up bagels, and were on the road by 10:00 am. We stopped in Eugene to pick up more beer and ice and got to Crater Lake in the late afternoon.

The views from the rim of the crater are absolutely amazing. The lake is the deepest in the U.S. and the 7th deepest in the world at almost 2000 feet. It is some of the purest water in the world and the result of these two things is that it is SO blue. Like almost fake, technicolor blue. It’s amazing. We took pictures and marveled at the sight before heading down the road to our campsite. We set up our tents and had some beers and food. It’s a huge campground with bathrooms and a store, which is a first for me. In Montana, you’re lucky to have an outhouse! It was nice though for sure. We walked down to this little amphitheatre where a ranger was telling stories and leading campfire songs. We were obnoxious and sang the loudest of anyone. It was a blast. The party continued at the campsite until we were finally told to be quiet and we turned in shortly after that.

Saturday we slept in and while the others made breakfast, Deana and I ran the short trail loop (3 miles) near the campground. It descends down to a creek and runs along the creek before climbing back up. The trail was gorgeous but the elevation made for a very tough run! The campground is at about 6000 ft and there was a pretty significant climb in the last half mile of about 500 feet which was an asskicker. Very fun though. After breakfast I did the loop again, this time with Zach. We were just walking but I did run a bit of it too. Later, we drove back up to the lake and did a hike down to the water which was a couple miles with significant elevation gain (it’s about 1000 feet down to the water from the road). I got a lot of miles in throughout the day! That night, we partied again. This time our friend Monica joined us – she happened to be camping with her family just a few spots down! We had a great time and talked a lot about climbing which Monica is very into. We made some plans for next year to do some trips together.

Sunday we had breakfast in the little restaurant and packed up our stuff and drove home. We played car games and talked the whole way. The highlight was almost running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and then finding a tiny gas station at the last possible second. Whew!!! We had so much fun every second that even that was fun. Those girls and hilarious and Zach and I love spending time with them. My face hurt from laughing so much! We dropped Deana and Dana off and I got home just in time to take a nice long shower and go to yoga at 7pm. It was a perfect ending to the weekend. :)

Lots of fun pictures, it was hard to pick the best ones. Here are a few but definitely check out the rest in the album.

 

      

 

 

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