Blue Crater lake

Tales from the Backyard…  Like a Geico commercial, “Did you know Crater Lake was not always blue”?  As Paul Harvey used to say; “And now, the rest of the story”.  In 1974 our stupid Superintendant decided he wanted a port-a-san at the bottom of the lake trail and could not be convinced otherwise.  Maybe he thought that people would want their picture taken at one of the world’s greatest vistas, standing in front of a Port-a-san, who knows.  So Ken and I started to make the arrangements by hiking to the bottom and surveying a good spot which was out of sight of the trail and the boats which took you around the lake.  Being solid rocks at the bottom the next step was to build a platform for it to sit on that was accessible but still out of sight of the trail hikers.  A few weeks later we had built a beautiful deck and when we put the port-a-san on it, sitting there you could see the whole lake through the doorway, a real kings thrown.  Unfortunately, in the fall we had to go down and empty the contents into containers which then had to be carried out by hand, the 1 mile hike to the top.  No small job, but we had plenty of help from the trail crew for the process.  I poured a little more water in the tank and made sure everything would flow out the valve under the toilet while Ken got things ready underneath.  The outflow had a single open/shut valve; you pulled it open and pushed to close.  With buckets ready, Ken pulled on the valve, the whole thing came out in his hand knocking over the bucket and before we could rectify the problem, the Port-a-san was empty.  So now you know why Crater Lake is blue.