Exploring Crater Lake National Park + A Review of the Shaka Guide App

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When we first arrived to our campground in the Bend area, we weren’t sure how long we’d get to stay, due to the wildfires, but hoped it would be for the full two weeks so we could get to Crater Lake National Park. (Find out more about the previous blog about Thousand Trails Bend-Sunriver Campground here)

We had only one day to visit, but decided we’d do the rim road drive and skip the hikes to bring Luna along, since the trails aren’t dog friendly. This also meant not have to worry about wildfires or watching the time. If we loved it, we’d just plan a trip back through when we came back south.

We were thrilled to find out that the Shaka Guide App was running a National Parks bundle sale over Labor Day weekend (regularly $149, we grabbed it for $85) so we could get the Crater Lake tour, as well as some for other trips we had planned this year. We had used the Shaka Guide App guided tour in Oahu back in 2017 and loved the value, music , upcoming points of interest and stories it offered, so hoped for the same on this tour.

We reached out to the Shaka Guide folks since we love their tours and we are now working with them as affiliates! Their tours are for many different popular destinations, not just National Parks! Check out what they offer and if there is something you are interested in, please use our referral link here just for our BarnesOnMove followers (YES – you can share with others!), or if you already have an account and are purchasing a new tour, just use the promo code BarnesOnMove15. This lets them know we sent you AND we get a commission! We will also add it to the savings page, in case you go looking for it later!

We made sure to download our app tour before we left and checked for a starting point from our direction. We packed up our cooler, grabbed the camera and binoculars (yes, you will want them!) and loaded us and the pup into the truck and headed out for the 90-minute drive south to the north entrance of the park.

Since the guide is GPS based, it picked up as we neared the entry and gave turn-by-turn directions, and reminded us to have our National Park pass ready for the gate. We remembered to grab a map of the campground, and we were glad to have it since there was a road closure we’d need to account for, and the GPS tours don’t account for those.

Crater Lake National Park has one of the best rim road drives we’ve seen. Since you are driving around the caldera, you have views of the lake just about the entire time, and the views in the opposite direction change in each of the different directions and were beautiful views.

There are plenty of overlooks to stop in and read the signs, learning the geology, history and indigenous tribe’s legends about how Crater Lake formed, as well as interesting details about it like how you could drink right from the lake and how much snow they get there, which the snow poles along the road really put into perspective. The Shaka tour also told us several stories and facts, as well, many that were not included on the signs. It also gave us a head’s up on which overlooks would have a better view, toilets, and picnic tables. Our son spent the better part of the stops using the binoculars to look for the Old Man in the Lake tree stump, with no luck.

We stopped at one overlook with picnic tables nestled in the trees, and enjoyed our lunch stop to eat, check out the short trail to the vista away from the lake, and climbing over and through some of the trees along the way.

We skipped the boat tour and lake swim this trip since we had the pup and there had been no boat tour tickets available for the day we checked (you can find links for that on the NPS website, linked above).

We did stop to visit Rim Village and walk around a bit, exploring, grabbing some postcards, and some snacks at the cafe. We also capitalized on the Park Rangers available for a chat and learned what the tree stump looked like, when it was last spotted, and that it can be pretty hard to see from the rim road since it is pretty small.

On our way out of the park, we stopped to try and grab one of the geocaches on the north side, but had forgotten to download the details when we had a signal, so didn’t have much luck locating it. That’s how it goes on some hunts, though, right?

The roads are well kept, but have very small shoulders and no guard rails in some areas, and are two lane. We had no issues in our F-250, and we saw plenty of camper vans and even a few small Class-C campers that seemed to be fine, but I wouldn’t try with something larger, or towing, since many of overlooks may lack room for parking or turning around, and part of the road is closed for road work, so you wouldn’t be able to make the entire loop without turning around. There were plenty of motorcycles as well as bicyclists on the road, so if you visit, go slow and watch out for others.

We have some great memories and amazing photos of this National Park and are so glad we made the trip! If our travels bring us back around to it, we’d love to stop and camp there in the forest, as well as try some of the hikes.

Have you been to Crater Lake National Park? We’d love to know what your favorites were, and if we should go back for the hikes and camping there!

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