Day 5

Today was mostly driving from Medford, OR to Salem, OR.

Click on a picture to zoom in.

We stopped at Crater Lake to look at the incredible blue of the water.

It's a caldera from a mammoth explosion some 7,000 years ago. The water is crystal clear and is fed by snow melt and rain. No rivers or streams feed into it.

This is a cinder cone from a later extrusion of magma. It was quite tall, but that's not noticeable now since it's covered by water. There are a couple of other cinder cones, but they are underwater.

These extrusions occurred before the volcano exploded. Magma oozed from the side of what then was a fair-sized mountain and remained afterward.

We passed Mt. Shasta, mostly snow-covered.

We drove into Eugene to see some of the University, but the roads were so blocked by construction we gave up and continued on to Salem, Oregon's capitol.

Next, on to Portland and Seattle.