Since we have all day to see the park, we were able to sleep in a bit this morning, which is refreshing, Although, I must say, I have gotten used to waking up at 6:30 almost every morning and taking down the tent. The cool morning air sure gets the eyes wide quickly!!! Today we left our campsite and drove a little ways to a place called Sun Notch. There is a short trail that we took that lead to the precipice of the crater where we could view the pristine waters of the lake.
Looking out from Sun Notch at Wizard Island (that darker mountain).
A look at the amazing blue water and the shoreline of Sun Notch.
From there, we drove a little bit further to a lookout that views a rock formation called Phantom Ship. The rocks out in the water vaguely look like a square-rigged vessel.
Phantom ship sailing the lake. :D
We continued our drive around the crater until we reached Cleetwood Trailhead. At this trail you can board a boat that takes you on a tour of the lake. You can also be dropped off at Wizard Island for the day where you can hike to the summit. We didn't do the boat ride, but we did hike down to the docks and got to be right next to the lake. It is absolutely amazing how blue the water is! It looks so inviting, although, touching the water, it was a chilly.
Me by the lake's edge.
After spending about a half hour at the water's edge we decided to start back up the trail. Like some of the other trails we were on, this one had a warning sign at the beginning stating that it was a difficult hike back to the top and would take about 40 minutes to go 1.1 miles with a 700 foot elevation change. They compared it to climbing a 75 story building. Hiking up steep trails isn't the most fun thing in the world, but I try to get some enjoyment out of it by seeing how fast we can do it. Amazingly, we did it in just under 18 minutes!!!! The funny thing is, it normally takes us longer to go up, but this time we were faster going up than down! Anyway, after that we finished driving around the crater and back to our camp. Since it was still early in the day and we had one more night there, we decided we would take advantage of the laundry facilites. Once, we finally got back to our campsite--with clean clothes--I set to the task of getting as much firewood as possible. Luckily for me, there was a couple of large, fallen trees that had started to rot. With the claw end of a hammer, I set about ripping as much would off as I could. By the time I was done, I had a HUGE stack to be burned. The funny thing is, every time we needed to put some more wood on the fire, I would go out and get more. Not from my stack, but from the fallen trees. Eventually, I thought we had enough and stopped. We burned through 2/3 of it that night and saved the rest for the next morning.
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