Birthday at Crater Lake

     Sometime last spring my friends Barbara and Jeanette and I decided to spend the night at the lodge at Crater Lake National Park for my birthday in late July. It was a great plan, but we were about two years too late. All rooms were booked for two years.

    The day before my birthday Barbara called. She had been checking the Crater Lake lodge web site daily, and, miraculously, there was a cancellation. Did I want to take it?

    Yes!

    And so I spent my birthday at the historic Crater Lake Lodge, after all. Barbara and I shared the room, which had a view over the lake of course; it's not worth being at the lodge in a room overlooking the parking lot. Jeanette, unfortunately, was unable to come.

    Once we got to the Park, Barbara and I drove halfway around the lake on the Rim Drive to Cleetwood Cove and walked the steep 1.2-mile trail down to the lake, where Barbara sat in the shade of a pine tree, while I took a long, royal-blue swim in Crater Lake, one of my favorite things to do in the world.

Swimming in Crater Lake. Note the snow.       Photo by Barbara Holiday

    It was a hot day. I let go of plans to hike up Garfield Peak before dinner, slowed the pace, and consequently had time to stop at some overlooks and take some short hikes I had never done before. It was beautiful to see the lake from these new vantage points.

Phantom Ship from Sun Notch trail.   Photo by Barbara Holiday

    Back at the lodge we shared a glass of wine before dinner, standing, not sitting, on the deck overlooking the lake because the usual Adirondack chairs were missing because the roof of the lodge was being repaired. The lodge, the tour boat, and other buildings at the Park had suffered damage from the late and heavy snows last spring. 

    The next morning I woke up at 5:00 to a spectacular sunrise. How grateful I was for a room with a view of the lake! Horizontal stripes of red, orange, and gold lay above the lake.

Moving quietly so as not to disturb Barbara, I quickly pulled on the dress I had worn to dinner, grabbed my phone, and tiptoed barefooted downstairs to the veranda. I watched the colors change, took pictures, then decided to walk along the asphalt path which ended, I knew, at the trailhead up Garfield Peak. When I got there, I saw that the trail was fairly sandy, so why not walk up the trail until it got too rocky for my bare feet? 

    It was very beautiful to be alone on that trail in the dawn light. The flowers

the lodge at such a distance, highlighted by the rising sun,

and the sun itself splashing color on the peaks around the lake as it rose—

it was all so beautiful.
    I walked about halfway up the peak before a combination of increased rockiness and a sense that I should get back for breakfast with Barbara sent me down again. But it had been a beautiful, solitary, sunrise hike.

    After breakfast Barbara and I drove back up the east side of the Rim Drive to hike to Plaikni Falls, another place I had never been. The wooded, one-mile trail took us to a stunningly beautiful, long waterfall that fell into a meadow of wildflowers on the steep banks of the stream with butterflies flitting through them.     

    Finally I had to face the fact that I had obligations at home. It was time to make the drive back.

    It had been a perfect birthday.