We had quite a day today and it wasn't all good. Let me get the bad thing out the way first. My camera is dead and we have almost no photos from today. Those of you who know me well will understand how traumatic this is for me. I forgot I had unclipped my camera from the harness while we were driving to the first viewpoint. When I got out of the truck, the camera fell to the ground and crashed on the pavement. If we had been in my Escort, it might have survived. From the cab of the truck, it didn't stand a chance. At first, we couldn't even get it to power on. A few minutes later, I got it power on, but it kept insisting the batteries were dead when I knew they weren't. On about the third try to get it to turn and stay on, smoke started pouring out of it and that was the end of that. Something has obviously shorted out. The camera is so old now, it won't be worth trying to repair it. I will be shopping for a new camera as soon as we get home. Fortunately, Mr Moo has his little pocket camera with us. Unfortunately, the battery died less than an hour later. I guess we just weren't meant to take any pictures today.

On a happier note, we did have a really good time today. Crater Lake is absolutely beautiful. It's so blue it's surreal. We drove all the way around it on the rim road and stopped at almost every viewpoint. We hiked to the fire lookout tower on top of Watchman Peak, which is one of the highest spots in the park. The hike was tough with the sun beating down on us, but the view made it all worthwhile. We could see a wildfire burning not too far away and later learned it's deliberately set controlled burn happening in the northernmost part of the park. We headed up that way to do a Geocache and met some firefighters at the Pumice Desert overlook. We were supposed to pull into that overlook to get some information from a sign, but they had it all blocked off. I asked if I could walk over just to read the sign and learned they were using the parking area as a helicopter landing zone. They had huge pool-size baskets full of water for the helicopter to take and dump on the fire. They let me read the sign so I got the info I needed then we were on our way again.

Late in the afternoon, we drove past the trailhead to Mount Scott, which is where we're going tomorrow. We could see the fire lookout tower at the summit and I nearly had a heart attack when I saw how far up it was. We're going to set out very early in the morning because it will probably take me all day to get my sorry self all the way up there. Mr Moo's camera battery is charging as I type this so we'll definitely have some photos from the summit.

We've seen quite a few animals since arriving. As I mentioned previously, there are about a billion cows in the valley near our resort. We've also seen the following nearby: a large owl, several hawks/falcons/maybe an eagle, loads of suicidal chipmunks darting across the roads, a fairly large animal that Mr Moo swears was a badger but I'm not so sure about, and lots and lots of bats at dusk snacking on mosquitoes on the creek running behind out cabin. In the park, we've seen loads of butterflies and dragonflies, several species of birds we've never seen before including a mountain bluebird, and one crazy chipmunk who tried to climb into my backpack. The signs say there are black bears near the campground and the nature guide says there are also elk, deer, coyote and foxes in the park, but we're not holding out breath for any of those.

It's getting late and we have to be up early so I should get to bed. The restaurant with the wi-fi isn't open tomorrow (on a Saturday? what is up with that?) so it may be a while before I get to post this. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!