Crater Lake
Oregon's Loo-Blue lake

The snow was still piled ten feet high beside the roads beside Crater Lake, though it as melting busily in the sunshine. The lake is touted as one of the natural wonders of the world and its waters' colour as being "breathtaking". Of course, with all that puff one is bound to be a little disappointed, or should I say not as impressed as one expected. Yes, the lake is a deep blue colour that reminded me of lavatory cleaner.

Yes, it is another rather large hole in the ground, which one stumbles up a snow bank, along with all the other visitors, to gawp at for an hour. There is a lot of tired-looking snow, that takes most of April, May and June to clear so that for a couple of months tourists can drive all the way round, before the snow starts to fall again. But we felt, as we drove away again, that it wasn't really worth travelling hundreds of km to see, and that we were glad that we'd other stuff to remember.

The Rogue River

We camped beside the Rogue River, at Natural Bridge campground, a super place, sun dappled, filled with the roar of the snow-melt swollen river. There were only a couple of other campers there. Erica and Lenore sunbathed on a huge log that had fallen across the river. I read and relaxed. A few hikers tramped past along the sandy river bank. We burnt river-borne wood that had piled and dried on the bank beside our site. L. sat beside the fire and enjoyed a much-needed reading-fix, reading a whole book in a day.

A Natural Bridge

The Natural Bridge is a lava tube through which the river cavorts. There was so much water coming downstream when we were there that the river was going both through and over the bridge, but it must be a great sight later in the year. The fresh-looking lava flow across the river is fascinating.

Waterfalls, the best Info Centre, and colliding rivers

We drove westwards down the Umpqua valley, stopping off at a half-dozen beautiful waterfalls before reaching Glide, a small community with the best visitor centre we came across during our US travels -- very helpful staff and lots of useful brochures and information. Glide also has"Colliding Rivers", the head-on junction of two rivers. We'd expected to see a great cacophanous mass of turbulent water, but instead saw, well, the junction of two rivers. Ho hum.