Sunset at Crater Lake

We walked along a portion of the rim tonight.  Sometimes you forget it is a crater from a volcano that filled with 5 trillion gallons of water because the region gets 430 inches of snow annually.  In fact, the roads up here do not open to the public until mid June.  Then you look at it from a distance an you can clearly see the rim of the crater.

The bright blue water is the result of what happens to light as it passes through the water.  The longer wave lengths like red and yellow get absorbed, but the shorter wave lengths like blue and violet are scattered and reflected back.

As the sun begins to set the colors change.

Reds start showing up on the rocks and in the sky.

Then the sun's light slips behind the ridge and it gets dark quickly.  The temperature drops (tonight they say into the low forties) and it becomes very quiet.

Tomorrow we are going to get a boat tour of the lake.  That requires that we hike down to the only boat launch from the only trail that takes visitors to the lake level.