We took a scenic drive along the Umpqua River.  It is a really beautiful river in a deep canyon.  This area is very lush and rainforest-like, similar to North Carolina.  Steep hillsides covered in thick forests and ferns.  This is a big fishing area, we saw lots of fishermen out along the banks of the river.  It rained this morning along our drive and a thick fog hung over the river.  Very different from the deserts in the Southwest.

We got into Crater Lake and began driving up and up.  Crater Lake is actually a caldera.  The volcano Mt Mazama may have been over 14,000 feet high at one time, but the volcano was very active and had several side vents.  When these side vents opened up, drained the magma (lava) out and the whole top of the mountain collapsed.  The resulting caldera filled with rain and snowmelt.  Crater lake has no other water source, no streams flow into it and no streams flow out of it, only snowmelt and rain.  The water is very deep, very blue, very pure.  And very beautiful.

There are a few other features within the lake.  Wizard Island is kind of a volcano within a volcano, within the lake.  It's a cinder cone that began rising and became dormant.  It's now covered with trees and foliage.  Another feature within the lake is the Phantom Ship.  The Phantom Ship blends into the surrounding steep caldera walls at many angles, disappearing like a phantom.  They offer a boat tour to get to these features that we're going to check out later.

We got info on the park and made our plans for the next couple of days.  We hiked Annie Creek Canyon.  We had trouble finding the trailhead initially, it starts in the campground.  We aren't staying at the campground.  We started hiking down into the canyon and swatting hundreds of mosquitoes.  As we hiked down into the canyon, we saw the beautiful little creek, Annie Creek, and it's wet, marshy shores.  Prime breeding 'skeeter breedin' areas.  We were hiking fast and swatting skeeters even faster!   I stopped to take a photo on occasion and feel like I lost blood each time.  We finally survived the 1.7 mile loop hike, but we probably gave up a pint of blood each.  

We got back to Mazama Village where we parked and bought a couple of showers, 75 cents for four minutes of water.  We drove just outside the park and found a road on National Forest land (Your Public Land) and camped out for the night.