Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

Our third day with Tim was spent in Oregon! This is a monumental event for Rich and me. We had FINALLY reached our 50th state! No offense to those from Oregon, but it is just not on the way to anywhere we have been! We had been sitting at 49 states for quite awhile. Now we can proudly say we have been to all 50 states. We had all sorts of pipe dreams of seeing Crate Lake and photographing this deep, deep lake with crystal clear water. Whelp, best laid plans, right? They have SO MUCH SNOW right now. No one can see the lake. We talked to a park ranger (from Des Moines, Iowa, by the way) who had been giving tours there for almost two months and she has yet to see the lake. There was 13 FEET of snow in the park. All the roads were closed…even the visitor’s center was closed (for construction). I had heard about a free snowshoing event they had for two hours with a park ranger in the meadows and forests near the crater. We decided to go for it! All those Dancefit and Group Fight fitness classes paid off because I was able to hold my own snowshoing for the first time….in powder up to by knees, and a pretty high altitude for 2 hours. We had a blast. The scenery was amazing. There were buildings that were huge that were totally under the snow. There is a photo of Rich and Tim racing in their snowshoes and spraying the park ranger who was our guide. At the end, Tim did a snow devil, which is face first into the snow. His beard acted like velcro and he was a riot coming up out of the snow. The trees…were so pretty. The ranger pointed out that we were only seeing the tops of them. The first 15 feet or so where under the snow. It was an unexpectedly really good time and I am so so glad we did it! But now we have to go back in the summer to actually see it!