Your friendly photographer all masked up in Crater Lake National Park / Rebecca Latson

Not too long ago, the Traveler published an article about how travel to national parks doesn’t seem to have abated, despite the coronavirus pandemic. The Traveler also published an Op-Ed by journalist Tom Ribe about why you shouldn’t visit a national park this summer. Let’s face it, visiting a national park in 2020 (and probably 2021) is going to be a little different, to say the least.

I admit, concern over the coronavirus has caused me to rethink my own national park photo trips for 2020. To that end, I’ve canceled most of my 2020 national park trips, except for the recent excursion I made to Crater Lake National Park. In addition to capturing scenic vistas with my cameras and to see how other visitors as well as park staff are dealing with Covid-19, I wanted to prove – as much to myself as to any of you – that it is possible to take an enjoyable national park trip that’s safe for you and helps keep others safe, too. It does, however, require extra planning, preparation, and some precautions.

Getting There

I have no intention of traveling via plane this 2020. Thankfully, I am fortunate enough to live within 1-2 days’ drive of many national parks and national monuments. Crater Lake is about a 6-hour drive from my home in south-central Washington state.

Driving allowed me the luxury of indulging my “kitchen sink” mentality and packing what I wished without worrying about suitcase space or baggage weight requirements. Driving was also cheaper than flying thanks to current gas prices. Of course, the tradeoff was the wear and tear on my vehicle.

Lodging

A Mazama cabin, Crater Lake National Park / Rebecca Latson

I reserved a cabin at Mazama Village, located within the park and 7 miles south of the crater rim. Cabins are nice because they are separate spaces which help with social distancing. The Mazama cabins are actually quadplexes: 4 rooms in a single building, but each room has its own private entrance. During check-in, they offered me cleaning service to come in one day during my stay, but I told them no thanks. Even if there was no pandemic, I still would hang out the proverbial “do not disturb” sign because I tend to spread all my stuff out and I don’t want to pack it up every morning before the cleaning staff arrives, nor do I want anybody touching stuff I’ve already wiped down.

Speaking of wiping things down, I used disinfectant cloths to wipe down doorknobs, faucets, table tops, chairs, toilets, sinks, window sills, bed posts, headboards, and anything else (non-fabric) upon which I might place my hands or other body parts. And, speaking of other body parts, I brought along tissue toilet seat covers for any vault and rest stop toilets. Do they work as a barrier between me and any microbial entity lingering on a toilet seat? Maybe, maybe not, but they were great for my peace of mind. I also carried disinfectant wipe packets in my camera vest pockets.

It was a no-brainer for me to take and wear masks. My sister, a seamstress extraordinaire, has perfected sewing awesome 2-layer cotton fabric masks for the entire family. These mouth coverings served the purpose of me keeping my breath, sneeze, and cough molecules from spreading to the check-in clerk in front of me, as well as in front of any other park visitor unable to keep the suggested 6 feet (2 meters) of social distancing.

So, what was the attitude regarding Covid-19 within Crater Lake National Park? It was a good thing I took those masks, because not only does Oregon have a mask requirement for indoor/enclosed spaces, there were mask-up signs affixed to all doors and windows of the buildings within the park. People had to wear masks if they wanted to check in.

Check-in for my cabin was in the Mazama Village Camp Store, where entrance and exit doors were marked and sneeze guards were attached to the front of the check-in counters and cash registers. All camp store employees I saw wore masks. For those of you wondering, the Crater Lake Lodge also had the same mask-up requirements, since both lodge rooms and cabins are Aramark concessions.

What about Park Service personnel? Near as I could tell, that was hit and miss. The rangers at the fee stations all wore masks, but the day I arrived, there was one unmasked lone ranger standing beside the line of waiting cars, handing out maps and directing annual park pass holders to take the other lane in order to go on through without waiting. I saw only one other park ranger during my 3-1/2 day stay, and he was hefting a backpack for some hiking. He wasn’t wearing a mask either, but if he was hiking backcountry, he probably would not be encountering many people.

Food

Bringing my own food to Crater Lake National Park / Rebecca Latson

Bringing along my own food felt safer. Restaurants at Mazama Village and in Crater Lake Lodge served modified menus, and the lodge restaurant was open only to its guests. I usually don’t eat out while on my photo trips, anyway. For me, personally, it’s a waste of valuable time eating all by myself in a restaurant, when I could be eating in my room and working on the day’s photos I’ve captured while listening to a favorite movie or audiobook on my iPad.

What edibles did I stow away for this trip?

• Trail bars, like Clif nut butter-filled bars as well as nut butters in squeeze packets, like  FBomb-brand macadamia nut butters and Super Fat Keto nut butters for a quick, filling, high-energy snack along the trail.  FBomb also carries a cheese snack called Keto Crunch, which is tasty and filling.
• Fruit bars/fruit leather – Amazon and Costco carry plenty of tasty fruit eats, like Stretch Island Fruit Leather (Costco and Amazon) and Pure Organic Layered Fruit Bars (Costco and Amazon).
• Mini candy bites you can get at Costco or any grocery store for that late-night sweet tooth attack. Note: if your room does not have a refrigerator (Mazama Cabins and Crater Lake Lodge rooms do not), then your chocolate might melt, as mine did due to the hot weather in the park.
• Those little boxes of cereal that come eight to a package. They were great with or without milk for breakfast or as a snack.
• A loaf of bread and some mayo and mustard packets to go with deviled ham, deviled chicken, deviled corned beef, Vienna sausages, canned tuna, Spam (yes, I love Spam). These items are easy to pack and can be eaten right out of the can.
• Ramen instant cup of noodles and a few of my favorite freeze-dried meals like AlpenAire, Mountain House, and Backpacker’s Pantry, which you can also find at REI and Amazon. I just added boiling water, resealed the packet, let sit for about 10 minutes, and had enough tasty beef stroganoff, chili mac, or scrambled eggs & peppers for 1-2 meals per serving. For an extra kick, I sometimes laced my meals with travel-size packets of Cholula-brand hot sauce.

I’d done a little homework prior to packing my food and knew my cabin room would have neither microwave nor fridge. So, none of my food items required refrigeration ... well, the chocolates could have used from refrigeration, I suppose. To boil water for those freeze-dried meals, I brought along my electric hot pot. I also packed a travel surge protector to provide a margin of safety for my laptop, chargers, coffee maker and hotpot.

I love coffee and enjoy it not only in the mornings, but also evenings while editing those photos. I have a 4-cup coffee maker which I bring along with half & half pods purchased from the coffee section of the grocery store. Those little pods of milky goodness are great for traveling because they don’t need refrigeration.

I carry gallon jugs of purified drinking water for the coffee, freeze-dried food, and my water bottles.

For every trip, I stow a few rolls of toilet paper and paper towels as well as Ziploc-type bags and trash bags. Trash bags serve a dual purpose for my own garbage as well as picking up any trash I might encounter along the trail (good for one’s karma, you know). I'm glad I brought trash bags, because I saw a new type of trash along the trail: discarded face masks. To be fair, I’m sure they probably fell unnoticed out of jacket or pants pockets, rather than people deliberately tossing them aside after use. Some of the masks I could pick up with a tissue and then place them in one of my trash bags. Other masks, like the one in the photo below, were past an overlook’s retaining wall and beyond my reach.

A new type of trash, Crater Lake National Park / Rebecca Latson

Scenic Overlooks and Hiking the Trails

I am not really a “people person.” I practiced social distancing before it became the norm. For Crater Lake trails, I limited my hikes to early mornings and late afternoons and evenings, when there were fewer people on the trails and better light for photos. During those outings on a narrow trail, or at a popular overlook where it was not possible to socially distance myself from others, I wore a mask. While there were a number of people that neither wore masks nor practiced social distancing, the majority of people I saw within Crater Lake National Park did wear masks when standing near others at overlooks and along trails.

Camera Gear

I’ve written about this before, but it never hurts to refresh and review – especially since my travel modes have changed over the years. I always pack:

• Tripod
• 2-3 camera bodies
• A wide-angle zoom lens. I wanted to attempt a single shot of the entire Crater Lake, rim-to-rim, so I included my 11-24mm and 12-14mm zooms (each for a different camera) along with the 16-35mm lens.
• A telephoto zoom lens (100-400mm, usually, but if I’m going to be somewhere with plenty of wildlife, I’ll also take a lens with an even longer focal length)
• A “standard” zoom lens covering a wide range of focal lengths (24-70mm or 24-105mm)
• Lens hoods for all these lenses to protect from rain, snow, and sun flare spots
• Circular polarizer filters (CPLs)
• Graduated neutral density filters (grad NDs)
• A neutral density filter to use for silky water shots (not to be confused with the above grad NDs)
• Spare batteries
• Battery chargers for the cameras and my iPhone and Apple watch
• 16 GB to 128 GB memory cards – lots of ‘em so I don’t need to worry about deleting images on the fly to make room for more shots
• A couple of memory card readers
• Portable hard drives (2 of them, ranging between 1TB – 4TB)
• Laptop
• iPhone
• A dedicated video camera
• Rain protection for my cameras.

Yes, it sounds like quite a bit of camera gear, but don’t forget, I have that “kitchen sink” frame of mind. I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

To many of you, I’m sure my preparations sounded like overkill, but as mentioned earlier in this article, visiting a national park is going to be different for the foreseeable future. This means planning far ahead of your actual trip departure and taking extra precautions to stay healthy and safe and, just as importantly, to respect the health and safety of park staff, concession employees, and other visitors.

These procedures I followed during my Crater Lake stay are ones I intend to follow for any future national park trip I choose to take this year.

Oh, how was my sojourn at Crater Lake? I’ll tell you in my next article.

The view from the Watchman Summit, Crater Lake National Park / Rebecca Latson

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