Highlights:
– Snow
– Easy National Forest camping
– Solitude in the park
From Olympic National Park, we chose to zip right down south to Crater Lake National Park, but Portland, Oregon falls conveniently in between these two parks, if you are looking to experience an incredibly unique US city. Additionally, there are four National Forests on this route, so free camping possibilities abound! We arrived near Crater Lake in the evening, and pulled up our handy National Forests Map, found a forest road, and set up our tent in a cozy spot. The temperatures were starting to drop by this late in October, but we stayed warm still in our tent.
The next morning was a beautiful, sunny day and quite warm in the valley. We began the drive to Crater Lake, with the temperatures dropping steadily with every meter in elevation gain. By the time we reached the park entrance, we were in a winter wonderland! The road into the heart of the park continues upwards in elevation from the park entrance, and at the end of the main road, we were around 2,100 m in elevation and there was half a meter of fresh snow. Because of the wintery conditions, there were only a handful of other visitors in the entire park. We caught a glimpse of the beautiful blue water from above and walked around a bit before cooking lunch in the snow. I wish we had snow shoes or cross country skies with us, as there are plenty of great trails for winter sports around Crater Lake, and we definitely missed out on that.