Tag Archives: Crater Lake National Park

Jigsaw Puzzles, Murals, National Park Service

Crater Lake National Park – New Jigsaw Puzzle

Another jigsaw puzzle arrived –  Crater Lake National Park. 500 pieces, a reference poster inside, new smaller box. We printed this one a very long time ago and I’ve always liked it. So popular we’ve decided to bring it back.  Now, we’ve put it in a new smaller box (easy storage and shipping), added a reference poster and on the design I scanned a piece of my hiking bandana for the bottom border.

Originally, this painting was all about those beautiful yet stark pines around the Caldera Rim. Those are whitebark pines, a  high-altitude keystone species that is now about to be listed as a threatened tree. And so, we’re highlighting that event here with a new edition of the lake and whitebark pines are in peril!

These puzzles are available for $18.95 each in our web store here. Just click this link.   Shipping is only $5 per destination, no matter how many different puzzles you buy, and now we have six new ones in the past couple of months.

So what’s the deal about whitebark pines? Why are these iconic and painterly trees in trouble? It’s a tragic combination of events that have come together in a perfect storm. An introduced fungal disease called white pine blister rust, Climate Change that has stressed the trees and allowed bark beetles to access the inner bark. Put the three factors together and it trouble for these trees. Whitebark pine has the largest distribution of any five-needle white pine in North America, but the whitebark pine’s health is deteriorating rapidly across its range, particularly in the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, and northern Sierra Nevada. In short, the forests I’ve loved my entire life are changing beyond measure and will effect not just the trees, but an entire ecosystem.

Like to read more, go to my friends at the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation.

Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings.

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

Commissioned paintings, Murals, New Painting Post

Crater Lake Institute

Second large painting for Crater Lake Institute of the lake, 2010. It features whitebark pines, an endangered tree most know as beautiful and iconic to this place.

Just an update about a side project of mine. Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park has held a fascination for me for a very long time. I first came over the Rim in the early 1970’s and saw that stunning view of the lake – and have returned many times since. Then in 1998 Nancy and I  produced a nature guide of the park and I got the chance to get to know the place on a deeper level. There’s a simple clean beauty here that stays with me. If you’ve been there, you know what I mean!

Then in 2016, I became the website guy for Crater Lake Institute, a group dedicated to the back story of the park. With decades of collective history, these guys had a website that needed help, and I had the skills to fix it.  Today, CLI averages almost a million hits a month in summer, has 5000 images and 4000 pages of anything you’d ever want to know about the park. It’s a handful to maintain, I’m telling you, but it’s also taught me a lot about the place. We’ve partnered with REI’s hiking Hiking Project to share our trail knowledge and we hear the park staff regularly stops in to find stuff. It’s been a fun project.

Commissioned Paintings
Below are some other paintings commissioned by Crater Lake Institute and their president, Ron Mastrogiuseppe. All these feature stressed environments caused by human interference. All enlarge with a click.

Yellowstone National Park, Grand Prismatic Hot Springs
Electric Peak in Yellowstone with a stand of Whitebark Pines in trouble.
Whitebark Pines in the Rocky Mountains

Check out the website when you have a few minutes. You’ll want to visit, I just know it.

You can also see this post and all the rest coming up by simply adding your email to our list here – right side, down a bit.

Thanks for reading this week.

Larry Eifert

Here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

And Instagram is here.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography and paintings

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website.

New Painting Post

Crater Lake Institute website – A Side Project

I’ve posted about Crater Lake Institute before, but we reached a sort-of milestone the past couple of months and I wanted to share. As a side project unrelated to painting, I build and maintain the website for Crater Lake Institute, a non-profit that helps Crater Lake National Park located in southern Oregon. This is a great bunch of guys who used to work for the park and now supply an amazing resource, the best single web-based library about the park – and I’ve supplied art, publication services and lots of work building out this website to the organization.

Winter at Headquarters, photo by Ranger Dave Grimes, March 16, 2016

This past three months, we’ve now reached web visitation levels worthy of mention. We’ve been averaging over 600,000 hits and over 80,000 individual visitors per month. That’s a LOT of eyeballs – at least I think so. This past year we’ve partnered with REI Trails, NPSHistory.com and others to broaden our connections and I’m fairly proud of what’s happening with all of it. Thanks, Ron and everyone else at CLI for involving me. It’s been great fun and I sure know a lot about this amazing park because of it.

Watchman Peak at Sunrise, March 17, 2016 by Ranger Dave Grimes

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web. And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of stunning photography

And here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Published Story, Posts about other stuff

Crater Lake Institute – a side project

I’ve not posted anything about this small side project, but it’s far enough along for me to brag a bit. For the past year, I’ve been rebuilding the Crater Lake Institute’s web presence. Currently, it stands at 3588 pages and counting. That’s right, 3588 pages.

Who and what? Crater Lake Institute is a group that works to enhance Crater Lake National Park, Oregon in many ways. They’ve collected more historic stuff about this park than anyone, bought equipment for the nationally-recognized Ski Patrol, commissioned over a dozen murals of my art for many places around the West, hosted rim-side interpretive walks, created publications about the park no one else has even considered doing. The board (that I now am on) is a bunch of retired NPS folks, amazing in their knowledge of this beautiful place.

I was approached to rebuild a very aging and almost dead website – but little did I realize how massive this thing was. In fact, it’s the largest digital and free collection of Crater Lake material anywhere. Huge sections are here on what to do in the park, Geology, Natural History, Oral Histories, Art, Weather, a giant collection of historic photos, stories, newspaper accounts going back into the 1800’s. I’ve also added my art here and there, sprinkled it with magic dust and – Oh, I could go on!

Because of this, the never-tiring park-painter has learned more about Crater Lake than probably any park I’ve ever worked on. Just ask me about the hand grenade death in the 80’s, the secret trails few park people even know about, the inside scoop on more stuff than my little brain can handle. And the best part is that I’ve gotten to know founder and board president Ron Mastrogiuseppe, fondly known as M13, one of the most genuine and interesting park people I’ve come across.

CLI-home-page-2
More of the front page

Thanks for reading this week.

Spend a moment and look at the site – then tell me what you think. http://craterlakeinstitute.com
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.

New Painting Post

Crater Lake NP New Puzzle Has Arrived

Whitebark-Pines-of-Crater-Lake-1000pc

Yesterday we received a shipment of new puzzles for spring. This is the first 1000-piece puzzle we’ve produced in years, and it’s fun for us to see the bigger image, bigger box, bigger everything. Finished size is 20″x 28″, it has an interlocking border, and it includes a reference poster inside. You can order it here.

Eifert-Crater-1000-boxback

The box back, with lots of great info and species key.

Eifert-Crater-1000-boxtop

We’ve also included a free poster with reference key and a bunch of information about the whitebark pines at Crater Lake that are in serious trouble due to Climate Change, an introduced pathogen and the ravages of bark beetles. It’s our way to cram some great interpretation and nature into one product – and it should also be a fun one to put together. Below is the poster that comes with it.

Whitebark-Pine-Crater-Lake-box-insert

Order this puzzle simply by clicking here to go to our cart. $18.95 plus shipping at our cost.

This was funded by the good folks at Crater Lake Institute and Foundation. Thanks, Ron. I think it’s a great puzzle.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Here’s the blog on the web.  And here’s my Facebook fan page. I post lots of other stuff there.

Click here to go to our main website – with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Nancy’s web portfolio of beautiful photographs

And Click here to go to Virginia Eifert’s website. Her books are now becoming available as Amazon Kindle books.