More of Bend

Yesterday we drove down to Lava Lands National Monument. Central Oregon is one of the most seismically active places in the world. The kids house is less than a mile from the edge of a lava flow. The top of Lava Butte is also a functioning Forest Service fire lookout.
It sits on the upper side of the caldera. The flow from this cone was something like 180,
000,000 cubic yards, enough to pave a 24" wide road, 6" thick for 160,000 miles! That's just one cone and there are 400 associated with the main volcano, the Newberry.
This is the caldera that spewed that massive amount of lava. There's a 1/4 mile walk around the perimeter with signs to let you know what you're looking at. You could spend days in Lava Lands.
I started to doctor this in Photoshop to accentuate the snow-
covered volcano peaks on the horizon. The south peak is Bachelor and the north peaks are The Sisters with Broken Top in the middle. Had I chosen the doctored image, I wouldn't be able to show you the lava flow there in the foreground. You have to click for big - it's astonishing. Lava flows in the Deschutes River have created dramatic rapids and water falls.
We decided to take a drive on the Cascade Lakes Loop, and when we got to the South Sister volcano, we just had pull off for photos. The ragged bottom of the photo is snow - there is still a lot of snow in the Cascades.
This is Devils Lake. It's a local favorite. I bought a sweatshirt at the Columbia Outlet store, and when I told the cashier that we had driven the loop up to Elk Lake, he asked me if we had seen this lake. He said the same thing as my son - you can see to the bottom!



You know boys. There were snowballs involved. The reflection on the lake was my favorite part, right behind seeing the rocks on the bottom. If there is such a thing, these are daddy's boys. My grandsons adore their father!