Lava Lands

Today we started out slow.  Chuck did some Jeep work, and I did some laundry. There are people here that don't understand laundromat ettiquette, so my loads ended up staggered.  One guy said, "are you spending all day doing laundry?"  Um, maybe if you hadn't left your stuff in the washer for 20 min. after it was done and then the dryer for 15, I wouldn't be.  But I digress.

In the afternoon we headed down to Lava Lands.  It's about 8 miles south of Bend.  The Lava Flow is right next to the highway.  We took a red cinder road up to the Lava Butte Cinder Cone.

That's it

Lava, lava everywhere

We went back down to the visitor center, which was supposed to be open to 5, but it was about 4:40 and they were having a cow that we came in.  We talked to a young ranger or whatever they're called in the US Forest Service in the parking lot, and she told us about these falls just a few miles away.  She explained they were caused by lava flowing into the riverbed and were not like typical waterfalls we were probably used to.  We found a parking area and then the trail to the falls and got to witness the rescue squad bringing a pregnant lady out on a stretcher.  

The falls were really cool, and you could walk right up to the river, which made me nervous about the boys.  We took the trail a little farther and realized mt. bikes could use the trail, too.  So, we may check that out tomorrow on our bikes.  They also have a one-mile cave there which is a lava tube, and I really want to check that out, but it was closed by the time we got there today.  

Yes, that's Chuck standing down there.

The Falls were more like crazy rapids.

We got a selfie with our faces in the pic!