June 23: Crater Lake, and Nevada

Breakfast was freeze dried chili mac and instant mashed potatoes. We got to use our butane stove for the first time, and it worked wonderfully. I couldn't be happier. I may cook all my meals over butane in the future...

Then we did the dishes, packed up the tent, and hit the road again.

Crater Lake was pretty incredible, even if we weren't allowed to drive all the way around it. (still too much snow on the roads to the east. In June. Imagine that.)

I'm not sure if you can see it, but in the second photo, if you look really close, you can see a boat just above the right-most leg of that island. Gives you a small idea of perspective.

Truthfully, it was so incredibly massive, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around it.

To stand on the edge and look down at the island (Wizard Island, that is), I felt like I was looking down on some kind of miniature. Like those museum exhibits that show the building of the pyramids, or the Battle of Little Big Horn, with all those super tiny little figurines. Couple the massive scale of the place with that altogether unnaturally brilliant blue color of the water, and the whole experience felt very surreal.  

After that, we hiked a short (1 mile) trail we discovered on our way out, then hit the road again to make it into Nevada before nightfall.

First impression of Nevada... hm.... Why on earth would anyone choose to live here?

Is it pretty? Well, yeah, I guess so. If you're into empty, flat-ish, desert type environments with scrub brush everywhere and brown and boring mountains in the distance. 

Okay, maybe that sounded a lot worse than I meant it to. Yes, it is pretty. There's a stark, harsh kind of beauty to the desert that's different from any other place we've seen so far. But in my personal opinion, it can't compare with the beauty of places like Washington.

We drove for five and a half hours, and I can sum up the scenery of that entire drive, with the three pictures above. That's what it looks like. 

We pulled into Winnemucca, NV around 8:45-ish and checked into our hotel, then spent the evening planning the next few days' adventures.