Lexie & I are "shoe-ins"!

I asked Alexis what she wanted to do for her birthday. She said she wanted to snow-shoe at Crater Lake. So we rented our gear and went up on the most beautiful day and scenic drive ever. When we got there, we were putting on our gear and noticed that some "camp-robber" birds were all around us. As Alexis started to eat an apple, they started landing on her hand and allowed her to feed them as they took the food from her fingers. It was so darn cute! We ended up hiking the west rim road to the Wizard Island overlook. It was a 5 mile round trip, and a lot of it was up and down some pretty good hills! There was hardly anyone out there, so we followed a couple of ski tracks. The road of course is all snowed in with about 20 feet of snow, and so we just followed the lake, and the tracks. The weather and the views were stunningly beautiful! I have never seen anything like the trees all covered in ice and snow. As we stepped in the snow, we left blue tracks - it was blue ice underneath the snow! I don't think I have ever been in such a beautiful place in my whole life. I sat on a frozen tree to eat my lunch, and basked in the sunshine. On the way back from the overlook, the mountain started making its own weather, and it clouded up a little. We could see that the Basin was clear, but decided to head back even though it was hard to leave. I thought I was giving Alexis the birthday gift, but I had such a glorious day. I LOVED IT and can't wait to go back for more! AWESOME in every way!!!