We left Eugene and drove straight for Crater Lake… an amazing lake completely surrounded by sheer mountains. Said to have been formed by the collapse of a giant volcano, there are no streams in or out of the lake so it remains one of the most pure freshwater lakes in the world as well as deepest in America.

It’s also a place that gets more snow than anywhere I’ve been (including our lovely mountain home at the moment). They average 500 inches of snow a year, and with the particularly strong winter we’ve had, they’re thinking it’ll be July 4th by the time they finally clear the snow from the rim drive. Sadly just about everything was still covered in 30 foot of snow, so we could only access this one point of the lake. We’re already planning on going back to bike the entire rim road next time.

After leaving Crater Lake, we stopped to see an amazing chasm carved by the roaring Rogue River. With all the snow melting, we got a chance to see some incredible raging rivers on this trip.

That night we made our way to Medford, OR to have dinner and chat with Richard Larcombe and his family. Richard’s last day of work at NNYM just happened to be the next day so it was nice to see him off as he’s now heading into full-time evangelism.