Wandering and Pondering: Crater Lake OR - aka Goldilocks...and the Three Spots

Once upon a time, there was an furry little character... let's call him, umm, "Goldilocks." Yeah, that's a good original sounding name; besides, it suits him, I think... don't you?

Well, Goldilocks went for a drive in the forest of Oregon when he and his two companions came upon a magnificent lake called Crater Lake. "But where will we stay?" wondered Goldilocks.

The trio kept wandering until they came upon a campground and went inside. This being early June, there were lots of places to stay, so they tried one.

Goldilocks liked this one very much and wanted to go outside and play, but one of the companions was not happy. "This spot is too crookedy with dark and foreboding tree limbs and has too many mosquitos!" she exclaimed.

So they went on to another spot.

Goldilocks liked this spot also and again was ready to go out and play, but... "This spot is too unlevel," said the other companion.

So on they went.

Goldilocks sees another spot that looks just heavenly, and, besides, his need to go out and pee on the nearest tree was almost too much to 'BEAR' (see what I did there??).

So onward they go until the come upon the third spot. Goldilocks growls at his companions, "This spot IS JUST RIGHT!"

So there they stayed... that is until two days later when "F" loop opened up, and they snagged a spot with electricity. And THAT SPOT WAS JUST RIGHTER!

THE END

So if the story hasn't put you too sleep yet, here is more of the adventure.

We arrived at Crater Lake early afternoon on Thursday, June 7th. Mazama campground and village is just inside the southern entrance at about 6000'. Because it was still early in the year, the park hadn't started taking online reservations, and everything was first come first serve. We knew this was the case and hoped for the best. It turned out to be almost an "embarrassment of riches;" we had our pick of spots and ended up almost having a whole loop to ourselves. Once we finally got situated (see story above), we headed to the visitors center and then up to the rim of the lake, which is about seven miles north and 1000-2000 feet higher in elevation. What a sight! We wanted to take advantage of the sunny day (without fog on the lake) and spent a couple of hours there.

On Friday, our plan was to drive the west rim of the lake. Although both the northern and southern entrances were open, the road around the lake was only plowed around the west side and a little ways around the south side. Quite a bit of the area still had a considerable amount of snow, so not many trails were accessible. But light blue skies, puffy white clouds and a deep blue lake were quite a sight.

We were also able to go a few miles along the southern end of the lake where the road was open as far as the Sun Notch Trail. This trail still had patches of snow, but lead us up to views of the southern rim and the "Phantom Ship."

We had been watching weather reports for the last several days, and new a front was coming in, which promised rain and possible snow at the higher elevations, so Saturday was going to be wet! We'd been hoping that "F" loop, which has electrical sites, would open. Returning from our day trip on Friday, hallelujah, F loop was open! We found the perfect site, just in time to beat out the wet weather (and with satellite reception for game 4 of the Warriors/Cavs playoffs)!