Apostrophe S

The Newberry Adventure II photo set on Flickr.

For Michelle and I’s first adventure, we went to the Newberry National Volcanic Monument to cover some of the territory I didn’t on my first trip there. It was totally worth it. (This all happened on Saturday, buy the way. Sorry it took so long to get this posted.)

We started with the lava tube cave, which is a totally underground passageway that runs about a mile horizontally. The cave used to transport lava. Go figure. It was way easier than the Buckner Cave adventure, and required no gear save a gas lantern, which we had to rent. It was a neat experience, but I don’t think Michelle wants to do it again anytime soon.

Then it was on to the Lava Cast Forest. Now, the road to get there almost made it worth not going. The Jetta was not made for such abuse. It felt like 9 miles of railroad tracks. When we got to the parking lot, we were the only car without 4-wheel drive. The lava casts were holes in the flow where the lava had surrounded large trees. The lava hardened, and the tree eventually died and biodegraded, leaving a “cast” where the tree used to be. Pretty neat.

The next stop was Paulina Peak, which you can see in the above picture. It was about 4,500 feet higher than Bend, and the temperature must have been 20 degrees lower. It was very cool, though. You could see for hundreds of miles in any direction, and you could see just how large the caldara of the Newberry volcano is.

Our last stop was the Big Obsidian Flow, which I talked all about in the Crossing the Emyn Muil post. It’s still striking.