Oregon Sights

We have visited two wonderful sights in Oregon during the past week. Last Wednesday we hiked four and one-half miles along the Crooked River at Smith Rock State Park near Redmond. The park is renowned for the rock formations resulting from volcanic eruptions and erosion by the river.

We watched numerous people climbing the rock faces.

The rock walls are beautiful.

This formation is called Monkey Face.

Yesterday we visited Crater Lake National Park, further south in Oregon. I have wanted to visit the park for years and didn't want to leave the state without going there this year. We are so glad we made the visit. The lake is incredibly blue. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US as light passes through water, color is absorbed, first red, then orange, yellow and green. Only the deepest blue gets scattered back to the surface where we see it as the color of the water.

The 33-mile Rim Drive circles the lake, with many viewpoints of the water. We spent a good part of the day looking at the lake and reading more about the huge volcanic eruption that caused the collapse of 12,000 ft Mount Mazama 7,700 years ago. I took many photos, though without a helicopter I couldn't get the postcard view of the entire lake.

This is Wizard Island, a volcanic cone created by an eruption after Mount Mazama collapsed.

This is the Phantom Ship, a lava formation created very early and then revealed when Mount Mazama collapsed, leaving the large caldera called Crater Lake.