Oregon: Bend 🌋
Yeah the volcano is the hint for this stop but add controlled forest fires and this theme is HOT! We never really heard about Bend, OR before planning our trip and more came this way to lessen the mountain driving for the RV. It’s high desert plain on the eastern edge of the Cascades so thought it would be a lazy stop, not a classroom on vulcanology.
🧑🎓+🌋=
Lava Butte south of Bend, OR has a pretty cool lava field and fun hike up the butte! Have you hike a butte lately?
👨🏫Professor Time: The Newberry National Monument is south of Bend, OR around 2 hours north of Crater Lake. It was on our trip planner but we HAD NO IDEA its size or what all we could explore. The Cascade Volcanic Arc is a line of volcanoes from northern California’s Lassen National Park (which we skipped due to weather) all the way up into British Columbia and is all a part of what is called the Pacific Ring of Fire 🔥 ⛰️ 🌋
Mt. Mazama (Crater Lake) is also part of that line and so is Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainer, which are on ItsDillerTime’s class schedule soon. What’s unique about Newberry is that it’s BIG but not like the other strato-volcanoes in height, it’s a wide body shield volcano with a BIG footprint. The Newberry Volcano footprint is about 75 miles north to south and 27 miles east to west, so you’re on it and wouldn’t even know it unless you dug around to find basalt (cooled lava rock) everywhere. It is actually the largest volcano by area in the Cascades range and it’s still labeled as active… just not dangerous 🧐
Newberry’s last major eruption was approximately 75,000 years ago creating the current Newberry Caldera, where you can find Paulina Lake & East Lake (Paulina pictured below), which formed after the collapse of the volcanos big eruption. The Newberry Caldera has a peak height of just under 8000ft but it isn’t as well defined as Crater Lake due to its significant lava flows which spread for miles, some via insulated, very large lava tubes like Lava River Cave (also pictured below) and even an obsidian flow off the east side of the caldera. With greater than 400 cinders (mini cones of lava discharge like tiny volcanos) spread across the region for miles, the Newberry Volcano lava flow spreads out like a pyroclastic octopus emerging from the lava waves. One such discharge or tentacle is the Lava Butte south of Bend, OR right off the interstate. You drive by the lava fields and the cone rising up about 500ft above US Route 97 and might think it’s a tiny volcano but it’s attached to the big Newberry magma chamber. A bit to the east is the underground Lava River Cave, which offers a roughly 1 mile hike into a lava tube (also pictured below) about 200ft underground. No lighting so bring your own torch or rent one of the park’s cause it’s DARK and cell phone light isn’t going to cut it, most of the space is just too big!
We thought this stop in Bend would be pretty restful but we haven’t stopped moving from one volcanic feature to another. Michele and Peyton also got to Mt. Bachelor, a noted top ski mountain in the area for their last weekend of ski season and the slopes were great 😎. Peyton got down the slopes a few times on a snowboard for the first time and Michele returned to her skiing glory and only stopped the ski lift once trying to dismount 😜 Crazy to find some great skiing toward the end of May!
The lava rock trail was pretty cool up to Lava Butte with multiple pyroclastic features to observe.
The butte caldera has ½ sustaining life and the other side still basalt rock. Some cool twisted trees observed that turned coming through the lava rock to distribute water consumption. Pretty amazing capacity to survive.
Family pic on a butte!
Still trying to figure out what this pose is about :)
If you zoom in on a few of the rocks peaking through the snow, they're obsidian. This is a large flow of obsidian that came form the Newberry Volcano. It’s a unique feature and really fun covered in snow.
Peyton wanted to see some obsidian so he got what he asked for… in shorts… in the snow :)
Lake Paulina in the Newberry Caldera.
Vince got to check walking in a 50 degree lake in a volcano off his bucket list!
No nibbles but Peyton fished a volcano!
An unexpected treat was Lava River Cave, a part of the Newberry lava discharge just south of Bend. It’s a cave or specifically a giant mile+ long lava tube about 200 ft under ground.
The boys have experienced Mammoth and Carlsbad but this cave was quite different. After the 180 some stairs the lava tube varies in size form about 5×7 ft to 40+ feet by 20+ feet chambers. Oh and there are no lights so it’s dark and only lit by your flashlights so pardon the quality of the pictures.
Some ice remains at the end of the stairs so we can confirm it was chilly down in the tunnel.
One of the larger sections of the lava tube.
Playing with the camera in the dark and caught a cool shadow pic heading into a narrow area of the tunnel. You can see the geological features of the basalt wall a bit better on this one
This section of the tube had a top rough or irregular surface while the bottom looked more like a burned tube semi-smooth rock.
Another mini education and reality check was seeing controlled burns in the Deschutes National Forest driving into town and over to the Newberry Caldera. Impressive to see firefighters out burning the ground fuel (downed trees and branches) across a large area. Driving through with fire on both sides and visibility at about 25 feet behind a pilot car was surreal and yeah you could feel the heat. This process is both healthy for the land and prevents raging fires from sweeping across the high desert plain so interesting to see them working up close.
The boys kept calling them smoke jumpers but we told them they likely came to the fire by car/truck… they were disappointed but thought the Firefighters were still pretty cool. NOTE: this is a controlled burn but seemed to be a large one.
A bonus stop that an friend from PBA Ally Sanchez told us about was the “Last Blockbuster on the Planet”. Bit of nostalgia and context for the boys so we made a stop. Michele and Vince’s first date wrapped up with a Blockbuster movie and Vince’s scavenger hunt engagement included a stop at the Blockbuster for a clue… which the attendant left in a drawer and went home 😡 It’s a longer story but imagine finding your soon to be fiancé (this is pre-cell phone era 😳) covered in mosquitoes at the beach park overlooking the Gulf of Mexico well after the sunset and about 2 hours after the planned dinner which is now cold was ready for the proposal. 😬 Well Michele still said yes but we made sure cell phones were involved in all future scavenger hunts 😉
Mt. Hood, waterfalls, the Columbia River and Nike Headquarters are on our Portland stop. Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone and thank you for your service those that have answered the call! 🇺🇸
