Crater Lake National Park Bingo

Loud, deep-blue jay with a black crest, bold enough to beg at the Rim Village picnic tables.

The tall black crest on its head goes up and down like a mood flag. It stands up tall when the jay is excited or alarmed and lies flat when the bird is calm.

Gray bird with black-and-white wings, cracking pine seeds along Rim Drive and the overlooks.

One nutcracker can hide up to about 30,000 pine seeds in a single fall, in thousands of little buried stashes, and find most of them again months later under the snow. Its memory for hiding spots is one of the best known in the animal world.

Listen for a squeaky bleat in the rockslides below the rim, then find the small round-eared pika.

A pika does not hibernate. Instead it spends all summer clipping plants and piling them under rocks to dry into haypiles, then eats from those piles all winter under the snow.

The deep, clean water turns an intense blue. Photograph it against the caldera walls.

Scan meadows and roadside brush along Rim Drive at dawn or dusk in late spring and autumn.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park has about two black bears per square mile, roughly 1,900 bears, one of the thickest black-bear populations anywhere.

Bright red mushroom with white spots, under the conifers. It's poisonous, so look, don't touch.

Its name comes from an old trick: people would break the cap into a dish of milk to stun houseflies, so it became the "fly" mushroom.

A whole hemlock trunk has bobbed upright in the lake for over a hundred years. Find where it's drifting.

Look down from the rim at the deepest lake in the country, 1,943 feet.

The deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 ft per NPS, filling the caldera left when Mount Mazama erupted and collapsed about 7,700 years ago.

Find the cinder-cone island in the water from the Watchman or Discovery Point on the west rim.

A volcanic cone built inside the caldera after Mazama collapsed, its summit about 760 ft above the lake surface per NPS.

Spot the jagged little island near the south wall that looks like a sailing ship.

A jagged little island the size of a football field, standing about 160 ft above the water near the south caldera wall.

Crater Lake is one of the snowiest places in the country. Find a snowbank still standing in summer.

Drive the Pinnacles spur and find the hollow rock spires standing along the canyon.

Hollow spires of welded pumice and ash up to about 100 ft tall, fossil fumaroles where volcanic gas once vented through the Mazama deposits and cemented the roc…

West-rim pullout that looks straight down on Wizard Island.

A west-rim pullout looking down on Wizard Island, with the Watchman fire lookout at 8,013 ft above it per NPS.

No rivers flow in or out. The lake fills only with rain and snow. Ask a ranger how it stays so clear.

West-rim pullout where prospectors first saw the lake in 1853. Good look at Wizard Island.

A rim pullout on West Rim Drive a short walk from Rim Village, named for the 1853 settler sighting of the lake.

Roadside waterfall on the East Rim Drive, dropping down a mossy cliff right beside the car.

A roadside cascade dropping about 100 ft right beside East Rim Drive, fed by Vidae Creek off Applegate Peak per NPS.

Easy walk through old forest to a waterfall fed by snowmelt. Good for small legs.

The lowest-effort waterfall payoff in the park, fed by snowmelt off Anderson Bluffs into a hanging valley of wildflowers.

Sketch Wizard Island from an overlook.

Steep climb from Rim Village to a high view over the whole lake. For older legs.

The big rim day hike, climbing straight up from behind Crater Lake Lodge to a high overlook of the whole caldera, 3.6 miles round-trip with about 1,010 ft of ga…

The one steep trail down to the water, and the only legal way to touch the lake.

The only legal route to the shoreline, 2.2 miles round-trip with about 700 ft of descent and re-climb, which NPS warns is strenuous even when open.

Finish the booklet and get sworn in at the visitor center.

Take the short paved path below Rim Village to the stone lookout built into the caldera wall.

A stone observation station built into the caldera wall in 1931, reached by a short paved path that drops about 100 ft below Rim Village.

Find the visitor center and pick up a Junior Ranger booklet.

The two hubs of a visit.

Find the 1915 lodge on the rim and its back terrace looking down into the lake.

The only hotel inside the park, opened in 1915 on the caldera rim and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, reopened in 1995 after a full restorat…