We walked from our hotel to the REI in the Bend just a short time after they opened at 10:00. Our quest for hiking boots ended successfully an hour later after much trying-on and consideration. Thus armed with three proper pairs of footwear and socks, we felt fully prepared to break them in at Crater Lake. We checked out of the hotel at 11:30, got gas, and headed down the road to Crater Lake.

US-97 from Bend to Crater Lake was a miserable experience. Stuck behind drivers going well under the speed limit, all we could do was watch in horror as driver after driver punched the gas, attempting to pass an entire pack in the face of oncoming traffic. Again fortunate not to have witnessed an accident, we took the first turn for Crater Lake onto state route 138.

The portion of this road from US-97 to the north entrance of Crater Lake was just about as straight as anything else, although it went up and over a number of hills. The Cascades far in the distance now were close enough to tower over the surrounding landscape, and we were headed straight for them.

Crater Lake—an item which has been on my National Park bucket list since our first trip—is a collapsed volcano known as a caldera, which technically differs from a volcanic crater, despite the park's name. It contains almost five trillion gallons of water (all rain and snow runoff) to a depth of nearly 2,000 feet, which makes it the deepest lake in North America—and only 2% has been fully explored. Six miles wide and remarkably circular, the lake is 7,000 feet above sea level, although its rim still juts up to 8,000 feet at its highest point. The only creatures to live on the bottom are bacteria and moss, although midges hatch at the bottom and rise to the top once they reach maturity.

The sonar system used to map the bottom has revealed the 1880s measurements—taken with a sounding rig made of piano wire—to be accurate within fifty feet.

None of this was really on our minds once we parked and made the hike up the hill. The lake, as seen from the rim, is a rich and undisturbed blue. Pollen from the nearby trees made patterns on and underneath the water. Slightly to the right lay Wizard Island, a smaller caldera created by a smaller eruption from the same volcano. In essence, it's a mini-Crater Lake within Crater Lake ... except without the lake.

Topped off with the snowcapped Cascades in the distance—and the snow still clinging like the trees to the interior rim of the lake—the view was so great that the only thing that stopped us from just sitting down and staring for hours were the incessant bugs which feasted themselves on the flesh of any creature willing to stay in one place for more than about ten seconds.

The thing about Crater Lake is that the lake is pretty much all of what's there, and while the park does encompass much more than just the lake, it's all that anyone ever comes for. Also, once you've seen the lake, there really isn't all that much different that one can see from different stops and pullouts.

But we had time and we had shoes to break in, so we set our eyes on a steep .8 mile hike to an old fire observation tower at about 1,000 feet above lake level (and thus 8,000 above sea level). The footwear performed extremely well, although I had to stop under the shade many times to allow my parents to catch up. (It'd be bad form to get to the summit and be napping when they caught up.)

The hike felt so much longer than advertised. While the shoes kept up well, the steepness of the switchbacks up those thousand feet was potent when combined with the altitude. Finally, we got to the observation tower.

It became well worth it. The extra height afforded even more stunning views of the lake below. We even ran into two college seniors from Western Carolina—both with impressive beards—who were on an epic two-month road trip packed with as many national parks as they could manage. Many of the parks to which we have not been are ones that they have already visited, and vice versa. We told them about the superiority of Grand Teton over Yellowstone, highly recommended an early morning drive over the Beartooth Highway, and encouraged them to go all the way to Acadia if they found themselves in New England. They told us about how Capitol Reef stacked up to the rest of southern Utah and how Rocky Mountain compared to Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

On the hike down, my mom spotted a few deer. Getting pictures of the deer led us off of the trail slightly, which ended up being both a shortcut and a great test of our footwear.

(Side note: possibly the most surreal aspect of Crater Lake is in its snow. Despite the increasing summer heat, enough snow banks still exist near walking paths that the trail up to the lookout tower had a not-insignificant section that was completely covered in a thick layer of ice. Enough hikers had trampled on the snow that the route through was visible upon closer inspection, but the idea that we'd have to do this in mid-June is hard to get my head around—and, this being our fourth rodeo, you'd think that I'd know what this month means to the rest of the country weather-wise.)

After our obligatory ornament purchase, we exited the park. Almost immediately the road became treacherous, as it narrowed considerably around hairpin curves. No shoulder or guardrail blocked our lane from the sheer drop-off on the other side, and we were going down the entire way.

The road eventually straightened out, but Oregon was not yet through throwing its asphalt-related absurdities in our general direction. The little town of Fort Klamath had road work that consisted of one guy holding one of those slow/stop signs. No lanes were blocked off and hardly any cones were put up. This "road work" lasted for all of maybe twenty yards.

One of the last of the Oregonian passing maniacs was a white car we nicknamed the "Joker car," for its strange gash across the front resembled the Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. When the driver did their inevitable blind-hill pass, we saw that its right headlight was literally dangling from the car and hug around it, flapping around in the wind as it went past. Ironically, it still worked perfectly, and so we saw twice the turn signal as they swerved in front of us to avoid a head-on collision.

Through this low country, surrounded by mountains, cows grazed on large farms and ranches. We spotted no less than five bale eagles: two families in nests and one by itself. Each one was sitting on a telephone pole.

We got gas in the miserable-looking outskirts of Klamath Falls and continued on towards California. We caught sight of Mount Shasta, the second-highest peak in the Cascades, more than sixty miles distant to it (and before we'd even left Oregon). Soon we found ourselves in California, and as the mountains began to die away, Shasta was all we could see in our southernly route. We pulled off for pictures, where we learned that Shasta was very much an active volcano.

We got on I-5 not too much later, after passing the hilariously named town of Weed. (Its sign: "Weed like to welcome you!") I-5 went up to about 5,000 feet above sea level ... and then went fifty miles downhill. I'm convinced that some evil genius designed the route as an instrument of maximum torture, and that the same individual calibrated the road signs to provide hope to travelers weary of the careening grades. When the mileage said it was 30 miles to somewhere, one would go what felt like an hour ... only for the next sign to say that the same distance was now only 27 miles.

My dad said it was worse than the insanity that was the Coquihalla Highway two years ago. It was my first time going over a road like that and I am not keen to repeat the experience, as it was the Interstate equivalent of the road out of Crater Lake. I'm sure we went more than 5,000 feet downhill, since, when we finally hit the straightaway around Redding, the elevation signs dropped 500 feet within a few miles of us going perfectly straight.

Something is up with these signs. I have no other explanation.

The generally nominal hotel food was an overrated reuben for me and overcooked steaks for my parents. However, the sustenance was heavenly to my dad, who had been talking more or less nonstop about spaghetti from the time we entered Crater Lake.

Tomorrow: two pennants at minor league teams and some great food in Sacramento before spending the night in Modesto.