A further amazing 3 days under blue, cloudless skies! On Sunday we went to St. Mark's, Hood River, and received another very warm welcome and met someone originally from York! Our onwards journey gave us some stunning views of Mount Hood. We travelled through Sherwood Forest and passed Nottingham and Little John Campsites! After a desert oasis picnic at Warm Springs in a hot dusty wind, we drove through many, many miles of conifer forest, making a gradual ascent. Finally, some steeper climbing within the National Park to reach Crater Lake, the highest place we've ever stayed at (altitude 7,100 feet). It's the most beautiful, bluest lake I've ever seen. It was created when Mount Mazama erupted around 7,000 years ago, throwing parts of itself as far as Canada! Then it collapsed, and eventually became filled with water. The lake is the USA's deepest.

After a most memorable time there we journeyed on through the Klamath Basin, where thousands of Bald Eagles gather in winter. So far I've glimpsed two, soaring high above, but we must have seen hundreds of hawks. We made a detour into Lava Beds National Monument to see some petroglyphs in a vast rocky outcrop, where many cliff swallows were nesting. Towards the end of the day we saw the very attractive MacArthur Burney Falls. We stayed overnight in Burney, which is a sort of angling place so the motels offer 'fish cleaning stations'. Went to eat at the Blackberry Patch, where we were offered a 'hot turkey dinner with all the trimmings'! We politely declined as the temp. was now about 80 F!

Today's wonder was the Mount Lassen Volcanic National Park. Another stunning trip under deep blue cloudless skies. We couldn't visit Bumpass Hell, as there was too much snow! The unfortunate, but wonderfully named Kendall Bumpass fell into some hot springs in 1865, and was so badly scalded that he lost a leg, We did get to see steaming vents and bubbling mud at Sulphur Works.

Now we're at the northern end of Lake Tahoe, and we're glad we gave it another chance after a rather disappointing visit to South Lake Tahoe in 2004, where the only way to see the lake was to go up the 'Heavenly' cable car. Tahoe Vista is far superior. We have a lake view from our room. The weather man has just said that there is not likely to be any precipitation for the next 7 days, which will see us nicely to the end of our holiday, but we do feel very sorry for people in Colorado suffering some dreadful forest fires.