Two Days at Crater Lake National Park: Hiking, Stargazing and Wizard Island
- Sarah Brooks
- Sep 27
- 11 min read
Updated: Nov 6
We arrived at Crater Lake National Park primed for adventure—hiking the rim drive, chasing that almost-unbelievable blue water and capping the night by lying under a sky so dark the Milky Way felt like a spotlight. Day two followed with a steep descent down the Cleetwood Cove Trail, a boat ride and exploration of Wizard Island, and a brief but unforgettable plunge into the frigid, crystal-clear lake itself.
Keep reading for my two day itinerary!
Crater Lake was the final stop of a three national park road trip this summer. We arrived on the south end of the park after visiting Lassen Volcanic and Redwood. (You can read about those adventures and my itineraries for these incredible parks here and here!)
It's a great park to combine with other parks or hikes in the region, given how remote and hard to get to it is. You can get more bang for your travel buck by adding in some other adventures.
This trip was nearly a year in the making for three key reasons.
The season is very short. Crater Lake gets 40-50 feet of snow a year! The park is only accessible for a couple months, typically from mid-June through October - depending on the weather.
You can technically visit the park year-round, but you never know when the snow will force road closure.
We planned our trip to coincide with the new moon. Crater Lake is renowned for its exceptionally dark skies and we couldn't miss the chance to make the most of this incredible stargazing opportunity!
We wanted to stay at the Crater Lake Lodge and it’s very hard to book!
The lodge only has 71 rooms and reservations open up exactly a year in advance, so planning far ahead is a necessity.
(I'll share more details about our say at the lodge, later in this post.)
We spent two days at Crater Lake and unless you're looking for more intensive hikes, its the absolute perfect amount of time. Here's how we spent an incredible 48 hours!
Day One: Crater Lake Rim Drive and Stargazing
We arrived in the early afternoon, stopping for lunch in Annie’s Village and the visitor center where we caught the short video before heading into the park.
I’m not usually one to spend the time watching the visitor center video but this one was deeply informative and I’m so glad we did. It gave us such a better perspective of the volcanic eruption that created the lake.
Our original plan was to drive the full circumference of the Crater Lake. Unfortunately, a small section of the East Rim Road was closed for construction - which is very common and not completely unexpected - so we drove as far east as possible on the south side which took us to the Sun Notch trail.
We did a short 0.8-mile loop hike that brought us to our first glimpse of the lake.
This hike takes you to an overlook that gives you a great view of the Phantom Ship and the insanely, insanely blue water.
No matter how many times I heard people say it - this view has to be seen in person to be believed. The blue is so ... blue! It truly looks like a painting.
From the Sun Notch, we headed back west and did the rest of the rim drive. For the most part, the road sits well back from the crater rim, with dense trees often blocking the view.
Luckily, there are plenty of well-marked pull-offs where you can stop and take in sweeping vistas. The drive took about two hours, including lots of stops to take photos.
After the drive, we headed back to the Crater Lake Lodge to enjoy some drinks and snacks from the the incredible view from the lodge patio before our dinner reservation (more on that, later. I have a lot to say about the lodge, so stay tuned!)
You don't need to be a guest to visit the lodge and the patio was very crowded when we arrived, so we hiked down the just a little way where there are benches sitting just below the lodge.
We had some charcuterie left from our roadtrip, so we had a little snack while we soaked in these views.
The sunset from the Crater Lake Lodge is pretty incredible, so if you have the chance to watch it from there, I highly recommend!
After dinner and once the sun had set, we ventured back out into the darkest night I’ve ever stepped into. (Pro-tip, bring a headlamp. Once you get even just a few steps from the lodge, it is pitch black.)
We were completely enveloped in the darkness of the park and the drive along the rim was a little bit unnerving - but 100% percent worth it.
You don't need to drive far to get photos like these! We headed north to a pull-off with no other cars, turned off the headlights and were completely floored by the view.
I have never seen The Milky Way look like this! The details were brilliant and it was an otherworldly experience. I stretched out on the ground and just soaked it all in. I’ve never felt so tiny!
Just make sure to bring some warm clothes; even in August the nights here get very chilly.
Day Two: Cleetwood Cove, Wizard Island and Swimming in Crater Lake
For our second day at Crater Lake, we were up early to take the boat to Wizard Island. Reservations are necessary and book up as soon as they are released, which is months in advance. The trail is closed for the next couple summers, so it was even busier than usual during our visit.
We skipped breakfast at the lodge (again, more on that later...there's a story here, I promise) and went back to Annie’s to pick up some breakfast sandwiches.
I firmly believe you can’t fully appreciate Crater Lake unless you hike down to the water. The views from the rim are great, but you only experience a small fraction of what this national park has to offer.
There’s only one way down to the water and that’s by hiking the Cleetwood Cove Trail.
It’s short and very, very steep. You’ll encounter a series of switchbacks that drop about 700 feet in just over a mile.
It’s not so bad on the way down, except that you'll be thinking the whole time about how painful the way back up is going to be. And trust me. It was - especially in the summer heat. Bring lots of water!
From the marina in the cove, we boarded one of the park’s boat tours. There are several options, but I recommend the one that takes you to Wizard Island.
This tour includes a 45 minute tour both before and after your visit to the island. You’ll get up-close to Devil’s Backbone, the Phantom Ship and other natural formations along the shore.
The guides are very knowledgable and we enjoyed a very fun history of the lake and details about the formations we were seeing. The guide will also offer to fill up everyone's water bottles from the incredibly clean lake water!
My favorite part of the lake tour was paying a visit to The Old Man. He's a 30 foot long log that’s been floating upright for more than a century.
I love a good mystery this is an amazing one! No one knows how The Old Man even exists. He defies the laws of gravity and physics. He moves all over the lake, traveling miles in a single day, often against the wind.
The guides only know his whereabouts when they see him, since all efforts to track him have failed. Legends of attempts to attach a GPS monitor to him include storms that prevented tours from leaving the dock and his absolute refusal to drift when he’s being monitored.
Once you reach Wizard Island, you’ll have three hours to explore. There are hiking trails on the island or you can choose to just relax on the dock where you get dropped off, which plenty of people opted to do.
Of course, we set off to explore as soon as we landed! There are two trails: The summit to the cinder cone in the center of the island that offers 360 panoramic views and the Fumarole Bay trail that winds around the island.
There’s really only time to do one of the trails without rushing through and sacrificing time to soak it all in.
At this point in our trip, I was pretty tired of the words 'elevation gain' and the cinder cone trail requires 760 feet of climbing over about a mile.
I immediately decided the Fumarole Bay trail was the trail for me. Besides, there was no way I was going to leave Crater Lake without taking a dip.!
The Fumarole Bay trail doesn’t have a lot of elevation gain, but it is definitely not what I would classify as an easy hike. It is a serious ankle twister!
I recommend sturdy shoes or hiking boots. You’ll be traversing along jagged, rough volcanic rocks, many of which are very loose and wobbly. It was a slow-going trek but absolutely worth it!
There are no rules on Wizard Island and you can swim pretty much wherever you want (as long as you’re safe!)
The prime swimming spot is a floating dock off-shore. You'll need to hike down a short hill to some boulders where you can jump in the water.
The water is FREEZING. Diving in literally took my breath away. It’s a shocking kind of cold - my Apple Watch read 64 degrees so I didn’t stay in the water for very long.
It was mildly painful, but I don't regret a second! It was an absolute-must-do experience.
There's a cable strung across the lake with long loops that you can hold onto to stay afloat and stare deep, deep into the depths of the lake.
It is absolutely wild to look down and see the lake floor 50 feet below. The water clarity rivals anything I've ever seen - including the Caribbean Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The depth perception is crazy! The rocks below look like you could almost reach out and touch them, yet they are 50 feet below the surface.
When we first arrived at the floating dock, it was pretty crowded. Waves of people come in off the boats, so it can take some time to for people to clear out.
In the mean time, we hiked about a quarter mile past the dock it to another inlet that was completely deserted.
We were literally the only ones on this part of the island!
There were no big boulders to jump off of here, and we hadn't packed water shoes so it was brutal walking on the rocks in bare feet.
I also came very, very close to stepping on a massive crawfish that was hanging out in the shallows, which I cannot imagine would've felt good! Bring water shoes!
A very important note. The Cleetwood Cove trail will close at the end of the 2026 season and will not reopen until summer of 2029. There’s maintenance work being done on the trail to prevent rock falls and the marina is being renovated. New pit toilets are also being installed, which is a MUCH needed improvement. These restrooms were some of the absolute worst I’ve ever encountered.
Where we Stayed: Crater Lake Lodge
OK, I've teased this enough. I have a lot of thoughts about the Crater Lake Lodge and many
of them are not positive. Let me break it all down:
The Good:
The location is amazing.
The Lodge is located directly on the Crater Lake rim and you can be anywhere in the park very quickly. Being in the park after the day-trippers have left is always an amazing feeling.
The views are fantastic!
The patio outside has lots of chairs to relax in and sip a drink and relax after a long day of exploring... as long as you can get a seat.
The Lodge's history is incredible.
The building dates back to 1909 and it feels like stepping back in time. The timbered ceilings and huge fireplaces are beautiful and it's everything you would love to love in a National Park Lodge.
But....
I wanted to love the Crater Lake Lodge. I really, really did. We went out of our way to book it almost a year in advance. It had all of the makings of a picture-perfect-rustic mountain retreat. It....wasn't. Let's get into it.
The Bad:
The restaurant reservations are a mess!
We had reservations for 8:15 which was the earliest we could get. We noticed a long line at the hostess stand, so we arrived at 7:45 to check in. We waited for more than half an hour to give our names. Once we were checked in, we settled in for a long wait and watched chaos unfold.
Plenty of guests and families with young children were rightfully upset by the insanely long wait. People were frustrated, kids were crying, everyone was miserable. Don't even think about showing up without reservations - we met several people who never even got to have dinner.
We ended up waiting over an hour for our table and then we waited another eternity for our food to arrive.
The food is was fine, but nothing special. I had French Onion soup which lacked flavor. My travel parters both had bison meatloaf which was quite good but nothing to rave about.
To be clear, I don't blame the staff. They were clearly doing their best, but were stretched very thin. The hostess was running inside to bus tables and the waitstaff was sprinting from one end of the restaurant to the other.
I've dined at many national park lodges and this was the worst experience, by far. We didn't even bother trying to do breakfast after hearing nightmare stories about more long waits. Instead, we went back to Annie's and grabbed breakfast sandwiches to go.
The bar...isn't much better.
There was a long line for the bar every time we passed through the lobby. Again, I chalk this up to staffing problems and poor management.
There were several large groups staying at the lodge during we were there - a family reunion as well as a group of cyclists. It was clear the staff was overwhelmed and that meant long waits for everything.
The rooms are pricey.
As expected in a national park lodge, the room was rustic, very basic and on the expensive side. That isn't the complaint. However, we paid a premium for a Deluxe Lake View room and it just wasn't worth it.
The view was largely blocked by trees - and if I were to return I would book a standard room.
That said, the location is fantastic and the lodge itself has great rustic vibes. If I was to stay here again, I would go into the experience with more managed expectations.
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