We began the next day with a stop at Tule Lake National Monument. Tule Lake Relocation Center had the highest peak population of the 10 centers run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. Although Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho is much more extensive in both the information it provides and the remaining buildings you can visit, we still enjoyed the exhibits at Tule Lake and spent over an hour there. Sadly, we missed the days’ sole ranger-led jailhouse tour, currently the only way to see the center’s jailhouse, one of its few WRA buildings still standing.
Following our visit to Tule Lake National Monument, we headed to the Tule Lake portion of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges. There, we hiked a half-mile round-trip up the Sheepy Ridge Trail to a lookout built by the CCC. From that 170-foot vantage point, we could fully appreciate the expanse that was once Tule Lake. It is only 25% of its original size today. What happened to the lake? It fell victim to rash ideas that seemed prudent. In 1905, the lake’s extensive wetlands, which once attracted six million waterfowl each fall, were drained in order to be converted to fertile farmland. The Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges were established in 1928 in an “oops” moment when the detrimental impact of that previous decision began to be realized.
After Sheepy Ridge, we wandered down the one-mile Discovery Marsh Trail, which winds through an experiment to reclaim reclaimed farmland for the birds. It was peaceful, except for all those dang birds. (LOL!)
Following our second walk, we downloaded the refuge’s free auto tour guide and went on a drive. During this journey, we saw a golden eagle, prairie falcons, white pelicans, western grebes, cliff swallows, and a whole slew of ducks and other shorebirds. The auto tour was great except it didn’t seem to have been updated since 2009, so some of the info was obsolete. Also, it suggested trails in route that had not been maintained in a while. For instance, one such path was supposed to cross over a wetland area on a bridge yet all that remained of that bridge was a couple burnt boards as it had been engulfed in a fire back in 2020.
The auto tour ended at Petroglyph Point where we walked 0.8 miles appreciating its chirpy and artsy ambiance. There, on what had once been an island surrounded by Tule Lake, indigenous people carved over 5,000 symbols into soft volcanic rock between 2,500 and 4,500 years ago. (Exact dates are not known.) Petroglyph Point is now home to an enormous number of birds ranging from owls and falcons to swallows. For the winged, it is a happening place!
Our last day in Oregon, we finally made it to our primary destination, Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and the ninth deepest lake in the world at 1,943 feet, and it holds the world record for water clarity down to 143 feet. It owes its exceptional transparency and hue to its depth and to the fact that it does not have any streams that flow into it. All of its five trillion gallons of water have accumulated slowly from rain and snowmelt. While I understood that Crater Lake is an unusual azure color, looking at it for the first time, I still had a wow moment. Wow is it blue!
How did it form in the first place? The short of it is that a volcano (Mt. Mazama) had a cataclysmic eruption 7,7000 years ago and emptied so much magma from beneath its surface that its hollowed magma chamber collapsed leaving behind a massive crater with no outlet that gradually filled with water.
This unspoiled lake typically receives between 500,000 and 700,000 tourists every year, which kind of spoils it. Apparently, it’s had lower than average visitors the last few years; it didn’t feel like that. We had to wait half an hour to get through the entrance booth, and it was a Monday. There were also quite a few people at the Rim Village when we first arrived, but they thinned out over the next hour or two. I guess everyone got their Instagram photo and moved on.
Much of the park was not open yet due to lingering snow. Visitors were only allowed at the Rim Village and a mile down the road to Discovery Point. Since only a couple trails were even options, it wasn’t hard to pick the Discovery Point Trail (2.1 miles) for a hike. This path goes along the rim of the lake with thrilling scenery that changes around every corner and continually challenges any height misgivings. That brings me to this note: Crater Lake is circled by cliffs nearly 2,000 feet high. Exposure to them is unavoidable, so it may not be the best choice of parks for those with height aversions.
While the chance of rain that day was just 16%, and there had barely been a puff in the sky, just as we were reaching Discovery Point, we noticed some questionable clouds overhead. We miraculously got enough cell service to check the weather again and found the risk of rain had gone up to 47%. We decided we’d better hurry back as we were not in a great place to avoid lightning. As we were returning along the rim, we noticed a wall of precipitation charging across the lake toward us, and it didn’t look benevolent. Jason and I can move fast when prompted and that definitely prompted us. We made it back to our car just minutes before it started hailing, lightning, and a severe weather warning was issued. Thus ended our brief excursions at Crater Lake. The hail, rain, and sleet did not end though; we traveled through it for a large share of our return drive. Surprisingly, it was sunny back at Klamath Falls, and we got in a pleasant 4-mile run at our resort that evening.
Crater Lake is a reflective expanse of striking cobalt that will make you feel like you’ve stepped into a Photoshopped image, but the thrill of adventuring in Lava Beds combined with its lack of visitors kept it on the top of our favorites list. Sometimes obscurity generates more contentment than a pleasing scene.
One final note on wetness and awayness. Between CO, CA, OR, and UT, by the end of our Oregon outing, Jason and I had been gone 14 of the last 20 days. (And Jason had to go on an additional work trip to CA while we were “home.”) Out of those 14 traveling days, it had rained on us 11, and all but one of the sparse dry spells fell on days we were driving or flying home. We trekked in many downpours and got hailed on repeatedly. It was a strange season of sogginess, splendor, death, and discovery, a true ode to this beautiful, messy, incredible, hectic, heartbreaking, wondrous, complicated life.