Crater Lake National Park

In my first year geology textbook, I saw a picture of Crater Lake National Park (Wikipedia entry here) in Oregon.

From that moment on, it was on my short list of things to visit. That something so naturally beautiful could come from a destructive volcanic eruption amazed me (btw, it's not really a crater, it's a collapsed caldera, but enough geo-nerd talk).

On May 31st, 2008 I visited the park on my drive back to Vancouver from the project site in Nevada. It was a little bit of a detour but one I readily made.

One thing I didn't count on was the park still being closed due to alpine winter conditions, with most of the roads & all of the campsites still closed.

Here are a few pics from my 30 minute tour of the place I waited 9 years to see:

Alpine conditions on the roads? I guess so...

Wizard Island on the left

Wizard Island

The trip was definitely not for nothing, however. I promptly left the park & hightailed it north to pick up my best (four-legged) friend from his foster home outside of Seattle. Awesome was in the care of American Brittany Rescue (though his dad is a greyhound) until we became a family (travelling circus?).

Awesome chilling out in Nevada

This is probably Awesome's theme song, but we're still working on changing that: