Day 54, Monday, August 8

Left Mt. Lassen today headed for Crated Lake. I passed Mt Shasta along the way and had to grab a picture. I got to the camp ground quite early today (before noon) set up camp, and then went for a ride around the lake. When I was at Lake Tahoe, I learned that Tahoe is the second deepest lake in the United States at 1645 feet deep. What I didn’t learn is that Crater lake *is* the deepest in the US at 1950 feet deep. That depth is incredibly hard to conceptualize. Just for grins, I looked up “world’s deepest lake” on the internet. Turns out Lake Baikal in Siberia is over a mile deep at 5371 feet in depth! A MILE! It also contains one fifth of all of the worlds fresh surface water. Statistics like that are awesome!
Back to Crater Lake… Just like Lake Tahoe, Crater Lake is intensely blue, but unlike Tahoe, Crater Lake has absolutely no creeks or streams feeding it. It’s 100% full of melt water from snow melted over millions of years. Until the early 1900’s the lake was completely barren of fish life. It was simply too deep, cold, and isolated, and relatively too young, for fish life to evolve. Tourists, however, decided that every beautiful lake needs to have fish in it to increase the value as a tourist attraction. So fish were introduced in the lake between 1888 and 1941 to satisfy the hunger. Apparently Rainbow trout and also a species of salmon have taken hold in the lake but neither of these grows to any particularly notable size due to lake’s purity.After spending the day today observing other tourists at Crater Lake, my reactions are decidedly unfavorable. In general the crowd at Yellowstone was there to partake in the beauty and wildlife of the park. At Yosemite people were there to challenge themselves physically while being stunned by the beauty of the park. At Crater Lake, it seems everyone is there to eat cheese puffs, to bitch and whine about being away from their televisions, and to occasionally look over the ledge at “that lake down there”. Over and over again today I found myself wanting to flee from this place to escape the incredibly aggravating crowds around the lake. Tops on my list of people I’d like to throttle is the family at the tent site next to mine. The family is a guy and girl about my age with their probably 2 ½ year old son. From the time I got back to camp all the way until well past midnight they argued and cussed at each other and hurled f-bombs at their son! If I had any phone service in the park I would have been incredibly tempted to call child services. At one point just before dinner, they guy started yelling and cussing at the little child, then grabbed him by the back of his neck, dragged him over to the edge of the campsite, shoved his face in a tree, and said “Don’t you take your fu*king face out of that damned tree until you’re god damned willing to eat your fu*king dinner.” Those two jerks yelled and cussed at each other until nearly 1:00 in the morning. I don’t care how misbehaved a child is, there is ABSOLUTELY no excuse for treating him or her like that. Too bad proper parenting isn’t a class that people have to pass before they’re allowed to breed.