(Written by Dave)

We’ve had a fun 24 hours here at Union Creek and Crater Lake.  Today I’m going to let the photos do most of the talking.  The scenery here is almost idiot-proof when it comes to taking nice pictures.

First some photos we captured of the Rogue River Gorge yesterday afternoon.  The gorge is about a 5 minute walk from Union Creek.  In the gorge, water from the Rogue River cuts through some volcanic rock with amazing volume – a sign said something about enough to fill an Olympic pool every minute.  It was quite a site and they’ve done a great job building path along the edge for safe viewing.

Today we drove up to Crater Lake.  Only Kathie and I had been there before and for both of us that was years ago.  Jan and Nancy had never been to the lake.  We heard from a ranger at the visitor information center that yesterday the smoke was so thick that you couldn’t actually see the lake.  As luck would have it, overnight rains cleared the smoke quite a bit and we had great views of the lake.  It is stunningly blue – the first two photos are of the lake and trees (looking down so that you don’t see any sky).  Yes, the lake really is that blue.

The next batch of photos are of Wizard Island.  Most of the photos were taken from roughly the same area.  The changes in colour are simply a reflection of going from clear skies to storm clouds rolling in as the day progressed.

The last batch of Crater Lake photos are just some of the remainder I liked the most.  Photos should be self-explanatory (I’ll load captions when internet speeds permit).

Lastly, an update on our top secret pie – it is sitting in our cabin kitchen.  We snuck into the berry buying room last night for a look at the haul so far this season.  Freezer and pie are shown below.  It is as good as we’d hoped, if not better.  We learned when we covertly picked it up at camp registration that the berries had not been frozen and that staff members only got small slivers to test.  Nancy almost blew it when the ice cream selling girl asked if the ice cream she was buying was for “our pie”.  Said ice cream girl was only speaking generically, naturally she had no idea about our pie – revealing later that huckleberry pies only go on sale “on Friday”!

Tomorrow we ride to Ashland, a ~70 mile ride.  Jan and Kathie, our new travelling mates are meeting us there so they are carrying our bags, it should be a good/easier ride for us, even with a bit of climbing thrown in.