I had a prior version of this post almost finished before my computer went wonky. The page froze, so now I'm left re-creating it. Of course I didn't have the foresight to save it as I went along. Now I have to download all the photos again.

Sigh.

For some reason, when I add more than one photo to a blog post my computer has the aggravating tendency to freeze, but only when I hover the mouse over one of the photos. If I avoid passing the cursor over them it's fine. Why? If anyone has an idea why that would happen please let me know. To me it just doesn't make any sense.

Anyway, Crater Lake – this time saving often.

It's as if they placed these gnarled trees around Crater Lake purposely, so perfect are they for framing photos. I can never resist photographing a twisted, bleached tree. You'll learn more about that when this report reaches the coasts of Oregon and Washington – possibly more than you ever wanted to know about the properties of driftwood.

After our first visit to the lake we set up camp in one of the several campgrounds nearby:

Impressed as I was by the tall fir trees in our campsite, I'd find they came nowhere near the majesty of the redwoods. But we still appreciated them:

What I wasn't so happy to learn about Crater Lake is bears are dangerous enough a threat to warrant the presence of "bear boxes" in each site. For the uninitiated, bear boxes are simple metal storage lockers. All open food, plus cosmetics, soaps and anything else that's scented, needs to be locked away. Prevention is one of the best ways to insure safety, and considering bears have a heightened sense of smell – and can't tell shampoo from cookies – it's better safe than sorry.

Fine with me!

The light was fading by the time we got back for another look at the lake, but there were still a lot of good photo opportunities. They were just more limited than they'd been earlier. Since we were leaving the next morning, having allotted only one day to Crater Lake, it was a good thing we'd stopped there earlier in the day or we wouldn't have gotten the better shots.

That's it for the Crater Lake leg. The redwoods are up next, and narrowing down those photos won't be easy. I took just a few pictures there. Just a few hundred. Maybe I'll investigate embedding a slide show for those, if I can figure it out (Read: If I can convince Paul to do it for me.)

Now, duty calls, but I'll be back a bit later to post the blog interview I promised. Again, I haven't forgotten! I'm just time crunched. But I'll get there.