Return to Crater Lake
Sheldon NWR to Crater Lake, OR | Visiting Crater Lake National Park | November 2025
After our relaxing night off grid at the hot springs campground in Nevada, we were finally ready to enter Oregon — for our first time together since 2020 (we’ve each been there once since then separately), and for the first time in the van. It’s now the 48th state that we’ve entered in the 2.5 years that we’ve owned the van, with Hawaii and Rhode Island being the only ones we haven’t driven the van in. We’re only a little bit tempted to drive it back to RI just to say we did, but when we’ve already completed all the goals we have for each state there, we just don’t have very strong motivation. And we’re not at all tempted to return to Hawaii. Ever.
We haven’t ever done anything in Southeast Oregon, and had been passively searching for hikes to do or places to camp that would help us get to know the area better. However, the first place we really wanted to go to together was Crater Lake National Park. We knew visiting in the winter would be very limiting if not impossible, but it was somewhere Curtis wanted to see and I very much wanted to revisit. And looking at the forecast, we noted that today and tomorrow would be excellent days to visit, with highs in the 50s and no precipitation expected, but after that a cold front was expected to come through, with snow in higher elevations and rain everywhere else. And so we made the difficult choice to save this corner of the state for another day.
The drive to Crater Lake was about 2.5 hours from where we were on the Nevada border. We enjoyed watching the desert scenery turn into forest, and looked longingly at peaks in the distance, all while listening to the audiobook for Tom Lake by Ann Pachett. Finally, we began our ascent into higher elevation, and higher still after turning into the National Park.
When planning this road trip, the prompt that kind of helped us decide where we wanted to go stemmed from the question, if we were leaving the US next year and could only go on one more big road trip, where would we go? (We have no plans to leave in the near future, but who hasn’t asked a variation of this hypothetical question this year?) Both of our answers were the same: Southern Oregon, the Redwoods, and the Sierras along with as many national parks as we could hit in California. And so our planning revolved around as many of those as possible, as much as we could do given that it was almost winter.
All that being said, I had a secondary motive to this trip, which was that I wanted to revisit specific places in which I have happy memories with Charlotte. I specifically wanted to go back to places she and I visited together alone in 2017. Back when Curtis had to report to his boat in Hawaii and I chose to stay behind on the Mainland for a week to wait out her quarantine period. When I think back on that week, there are a few significant moments that have become core memories for me and always fill me with pride and joy to think that we did that together, just her and me. And so I wanted to return to those places where those memories took place, to stand where we once stood and feel her presence. And one of those places happens to be Crater Lake.
A day or two before our planned arrival at Crater Lake, the area had its first big snowfall of the season. It was the end of September 2017, I had been hoping to find fall colors on my drive, but instead found myself driving right into winter. But I didn’t let the fear of ice or snow on the road slow me down. I knew that all we could do was drive up to the South viewpoint of the lake, that all the other roads were closed and Charlotte wasn’t allowed on the trails, but I did it anyway. We arrived to a winter wonderland, with snow still lining every branch of the pine trees, the mountains covered, and only the roads were plowed. I put on the only jacket I had, slipped on my hiking boots, and took Charlotte on a little walk to the rim. She was thrilled to find that there was snow, and she got to play in it for what would be the last time for the next 3 years. When we made it to the rim, I made her stop so I could take pictures of the lake, a deep shade of blue contrasting against the white snow. Deciding she wanted a better look, Charlotte jumped up on the brick wall to see for herself. Just then, all the other visitors around us stopped taking pictures of the lake, and focused their cameras on the adorable basset hound who was also enjoying the gorgeous views. It was one of my proudest moments as a dog mom.
And so today, my only goal was to go back to that spot on the wall where Charlotte had stood. I didn’t care that once again, all we would be able to do was visit the Southern viewpoint, I just had to see this spot again, to sit there and think of Charlotte and cry. And that’s exactly what we did.
Today, there was next to no snow where we were, only on the tops of peaks. Definitely not what I was expecting for mid-November, but we’ll take it if it means we can safely visit the park without 4WD on the van. We enjoyed a little picnic lunch on the rim, then decided to walk along the rim trail heading towards the West. The road around the crater was closed, and the peaks Curtis was interested in hiking to were likely icy and closed, and so we just enjoyed what we could see. Besides the big beautiful lake being the main thing we could see, we also spotted a bald eagle on our walk! We lingered as long as we could stand the cold, and finally headed back to the van to make a plan for the next day.
We decided to return down the East side of the crater to some dispersed camping in the national forest, because we knew it would be plentiful this time of year and we would have cell signal. We found a spot deep in the woods among the tall pines, and went for a short walk where we saw many mushrooms, then spent the rest of the evening making plans for the week ahead.
