Newberry Volcanic National Monument

View of lava trails below Lava Butte

 

Wow, what a storm last night.  Cooper cleared the three feet up onto our bed in a matter of seconds when there was a tremendous boom around midnight.  At least he did return to his bed once the storm passed. 

We woke up to more storms and rain…oh wonderful so we headed to Bend, OR to get a few dog supplies.  Cooper would not have been too pleased to find no dog food in the cupboard later in the week.

Fire Observatory at the top of Lava Butte

Side view of Lava Butte

We sat in Bend’s Micky D’s for breakfast and used their free WiFi to upload a few pictures waiting on PetCo to open.  Once our errands were done we headed back towards our campground.  On the way we decided to venture into another section of Newberry Volcanic National Monument. 

We ate our lunch in actual sunshine and headed out to the Lava Butte, a 500 foot tall cinder cone…after a drive of 5 minutes and we were at the top of this huge butte created by a two-phase eruption 7000 years ago.  Evidently the first phase sent the molten rock up into the air where it cooled and dropped back as cinders…a lot of cinders because the butte is massive.  Too bad the views were still obscured by the smoke from the numerous fires in the area.  We wandered around the loop trail with Cooper along for the hike…got to love the Forest Service sites since they are so dog friendly.

 

Flowers in the lava field

 

Benham Falls

The weather actually was still mostly sunny so after lunch we wandered around the lava field.  Off in the distance a cloud started looking ominous so we decided to vacate the open lava and head off to see Benham Falls on the Deschutes River.  Not much of a water fall, more like a series of heavy duty rapids.   It had a large amount of water moving through a narrow pass…not much drop, but lots of volume.   Reminded us of white water rapids on the James after a flood more than any water fall.

Cedar Waxwing

We even did a bit of bird watching…did not know that Cedar Waxwings caught insects in mid-air.  Both of us tried to get a decent picture, but those buggers were quick. 

 

For some reason they seemed to land on one particular tree so we’d focus on that one spot in the hopes one would land…20 minutes later we gave up the effort.  Along the trail we found both chipmunks and picas.

 

Pica

Given that our morning started out with thunderstorms and rain we had a pretty decent day…a couple of hikes, waterfalls and birds.  Got to love it…until we returned to camp to yet more rain.  Thankfully we had stopped on the way for a quick bite so we didn’t have to cook in the rain.  Tomorrow it is ‘supposed’ to be 0% chance of rain…we shall see.

 

Flowers growing among the cinders