Newberry National Volcanic Monument

October 9-11:

We decided we needed to take our tent trailer out for one last campout before it got too cold and rainy.  Hyrum found us a great campsite in the crater of a volcano...how cool is that?  We camped on Paulina Lake in the Deschutes National Forest near Bend, OR.  The only bummer is that we wanted to hike through the lava river cave but it was already closed for the season.  I think we'll just have to come back another time:)

Adventure #1: we ran out of gas:) We didn't realize the elevation we were going to have to drive over plus the added drag of a tent trailer.  We sort of miscalculated our gas.  Luckily Hyrum was able to hitch a ride into the closest town (about 8 miles away) and then hitch a ride back.  We were all set and back on the road in about 45 minutes.

Because of the delay we didn't get into our campsite until it was almost dark but we did get this beautiful sunset as we were setting up our tent trailer.

We had a fantastic camp site surrounded by trees and just a few feet from the edge of the lake.

Emerson and Julian with a giant pumice stone they found while hiking around the Lava Lands visitor center

They had a really nice trail through a 75,000 year old lava flow.

We all agreed this old tree stump looked like Loch Ness!

Julian hanging out on the trail.  It was a pretty windy day

Jules and I hiking around the lava flow

We drove to an obsidian flow just a few miles from the lava tunnel.  It was an amazingly huge field of obsidian and other rocks that the boys loved hiking around and climbing on.

We thought this piece of obsidian sitting on the rock looked like our cat, Peter:)

One last stop for the day.  We drove to the top of Paulina Peak Summit.  It was super cold and windy up there but had a fantastic 360 degree view of the lakes and surrounding volcanic features.

All those bumpy hills in the background are volcanic cones and vents that have formed over millions of years.

Hyrum and I at the summit.  The cone between the two lakes is the remains of the largest volcano in the area.

Our last night camping was a bit treacherous.  A big wind storm came up and blew our tent trailer around until about 3:00 AM.  I didn't get much sleep, I kept thinking of all those tall trees around our campsite...BUT, in the morning all was calm and there was this beautiful fog over the lake.  It really made us wish we had brought the canoe along, the water was pure glass.