Crater Lake National Park, Or

Submitted by Brien from California

Crater Lake is still number one of the places that I MUST visit in my lifetime. That said, a surge of visitors to the park following the reopening after the COVID 19 closure has park officials worried that visitors who are not following the rules of the park with contaminate the lake and cause its beautiful clear waters to turn murky. Here’s our shameless plea to listen to your NPS rangers…the rules of each park are there for good reasons!

Now, onto this beautiful submission from Brien S following a trip taken with friends last summer.

Last summer my friends and I decided to go to Crater Lake in Oregon for a day trip. It took us about 3 hours to get there from where we are in California.

The air was so much cooler that high up. Crater Lake is actually made up completely of rain water and snow melt and I was amazed at the clarity of the water and the rich turquoise blue hues. Crater Lake was formed several thousand years ago when a volcano erupted and collapsed the peak of a mountain and now sits as the mouth of a dormant volcano. The perimeter of the volcano is around 36 miles! It’s a gorgeous drive.

It was completely worth the drive and the expense to get there. My friends and I had a great time.

Have you ever seen blue that beautiful? This is the kind of a color that, as an artist, I am always trying to recreate but never can get quite right….the color of the Caribbean Sea has always been hard to master. What color in nature do you love the most?