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Chiloquin, OR: gateway to Crater Lake. Rich in it’s Indian heritage, it is home to the Klamath tribes. We stayed at the Waterwheel RV Park and Campground, right on the Williamson River. It’s waters were crystal clear and cold. The river is shallow near the campground, with lots of larger rocks in the middle of the knee deep water making for pretty rapid splash sounds. Spotted red crawdads that were the size of small lobsters. Enjoyed beautiful sunsets down at the dock, and entertained by people on the other side jumping off a 20-ish foot high building (formerly part of a dam structure?). On our side of the river on campground property you can see an old historic waterwheel, no doubt in days gone by much earlier than the dam. It was a pleasant spot and many friendly campers here.

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Beyond Crater Lake itself (which I’ll get to in a minute), there are plenty of water bodies and forests to hike and enjoy, Agency Lake is the closest, which we just drove around and Upper Klamath Lake, both very big and scenic. We did however stop at the Lake of the Woods Resort for a few hours of leisurely drinking local Oregon beer and watching the activity by the Marina. 

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At Crater Lake, we opted to take the Trolley Tour. It was a 2 hour ranger-narrated tour around the West Rim, which gave us the day off as drivers (nice, since these roads are fairly skinny and guardrails are few. Well worth it. We had pretty good weather; although there was patchy clouds, the sun did break through to shine upon that glorious deep blue turquoise water. We saw plenty of wildflowers on the short stroll via Castle Crest Trail. We did not however make it down to the water’s edge. There is one and only one way to get down there via the Cleetwood Cove Trail. We were forewarned by several people that it is a very strenuous hike; in 1.1 miles, it drops 700 feet in elevation, Walking back up is equivalent to climbing 65 flights of stairs! Since we wussed out on driving with the Trolley, we simply chose to stay wussy today and did not hike it.
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Crater Lake Profile

Crater Lake National Park protects the deepest lake in the US. Fed by rain and snow (but no rivers or streams), the lake is considered to be the cleanest large body of water in the world. The water is exceptional for its clarity and intense blue color.
The lake rests inside a caldera formed 7,700 years ago when a 12,000 foot-tall volcano collapsed following a major eruption. The eruption may have been the latest in 

North America in the past 640,000 years. Later eruptions formed Wizard Island, a cinder cone near the southwest shore.
Today, old-growth forests blanket the volcano’s slopes, harboring more than 700 native plant species and at least 72 types of mammals. The park is central to the cultural traditions of local American Indian tribes, whose ancestors witnessed the lake’s formation.
Park established: 1902
Size: 183,224 acres
Number of visitors last year: 648,000
Lake Depth: 1,943 feet deep
Lake Width: 4.5 to 6 miles
Highest Point: Mount Scott, elevation 8,929 feet
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What is the story behind the “Old Man of the Lake”? 

The  Old Man is a celebrity favorite among visitors and Rangers alike who are always looking to spot him on Crater Lake. Actually, he is not a person at all, but, instead, the Old Man is a 30-foot mountain hemlock log that has, (at least since 1896), floated vertically and continuously in the Lake, with about 3+ feet of the stump above water.

His actual age has been carbon dated to more than 450 years old, though the physics of his upright stance remain a mystery, as do his seemingly random travels across the surface of Crater Lake. Theories on his orientation abound, and though not proven, the commonly held belief is that because the lower part of the tree stump has been in the cold water for over a hundred years, its density has increased, making the Old Man buoyant and balanced.

His travels were first tracked in 1896 by Joseph Diller, an early Park geologist who completed the sketch accompanying this post. The curiosity surrounding the Old Man continued to grow and, in 1938, Washington D.C commissioned a study of his travels. Between July and October, “Old Man” traveled 62.1 miles, an average of .67 miles/day with his maximum daily distance of 3.8 miles achieved on August 6th!

Some believe that the Old Man controls the weather here at Crater Lake and woe be to those who mess with him. As the story goes, in 1988 when the Park brought in a submersible to explore the Lake bottom, the researchers concerned about running into “Old Man”, tied him up on the eastern shore of Wizard Island. Shortly thereafter storms blew in, making it impossible to launch the submersible at all. When this was quickly followed by snow in August, the scientists very quietly, (and under cover of night), released “Old Man” back into the Lake, thus restoring the weather and the Old Man’s freedom.