TTRVE - Day 3

We went to Crater Lake National Park today, but it all began with the most unpleasant part of RV camping. What to do about the poo.

I think the RV has a slight leak from one of the tanks. I don't want to guess if it's the black water (from the throne) or the grey water (sinks and shower). Really it's safer if I don't know. What the slight leak means is that there's always a bit of liquid when I take off the cap. Ugh.

So at WalMart yesterday we bought plastic gloves and bleach spray. And this is an operation we approach delicately. Very delicately. Thankfully it's over quickly and we can get on with the day.

We and the Toners all piled in our RV for the drive up to the crater. First stop was the visitor's center where we could get our passport stamp and find out how much of the loop road is open (answer: not much - still a ton of snow at the crater and they do twice-daily snowshoeing treks but the road is still not passable more than about six miles of the 33-mile loop).

At the visitor center I got some pics of the kiddies.

Then we commenced the drive around the crater to see how much we could see.

It really is an amazing place. The deepest lake in the United States at over 1900ft deep. The cleanest body of water in the world, as it is only fed by rain and snow. The bluest water you could imagine. And contrasted with the snow... spectacular.

Photos of course do not do it justice.

Catie was a bit unhappy at having to get out of the RV to look around. She would rather have played.

We have another night at the campground, hopefully better than last night. Charlie woke up screaming at 2am, which is when we noticed that the power had gone out so I stumbled around in the darkness outside only to discover that yes, the power cable was plugged in, and yes, the circuit breaker was still on. But it did not occur to me that the entire campground was pitch black - power outage not confined to us.

At about 5am: thunder and rain. Oh crap, the camp chairs are still outside. My second trek out of the night - fold up the camp chairs, stick them in the RV, back to bed. Everyone was up at 7:30am. Thank goodness we brought the espresso machine...

But right now I'm sitting outside in a camp chair (dry, thanks to the 5am wakeup), with a g&t (thanks to Jasmine), writing the blog post and fixing up the photos. It's a comfortable 70-something degrees. Andrew is lighting the charcoal for the barbeque, Jasmine is inside cooking tortellini for the kids. It's all good. Very, very good.