Bend, Oregon Vacation



The Guys

We spent the past week on vacation with friends in Bend, Oregon.  The group consisted of three couples and my daughter and grandson.  It was a lot of fun, but we did a ton of driving.  It got to the point where the Little Guy kept asking, "Home?" every time we stopped.  He did really well, but the adults are all exhausted.  
 We've done these vacations before.  The guys all ride their motorcycles and the wives follow in support vehicles.  Usually we carry extra gear for the guys and the coolers and food.  We find a hotel and use it as a central base and go on a lot of scenic drives radiating out from the hotel. 

Bend has a lot of nice scenic drives surrounding it.  This time we saw the lava beds, Crater Lake, Sisters, and the Cascade Lakes.  We also went to the High Desert Museum, which is excellent by the way, and hiked into a mile-long lava tube.

Lava Beds Observatory

The first day was spent in getting to Bend.  It was a long day.  The second day we didn't plan as much riding but drove through the lava beds and found a really neat observatory made from the lava rock.  You could look through little portholes built into the thick walls to observe the different mountain peaks.  We stopped at Sisters on the way back and had lunch and did some shopping.  It's a neat little town.  I even found a yarn/quilting store.

The third day we drove to Crater Lake.  The lake was so blue and the sun was out.  There were still roads closed due to snow there.  It was beautiful.

The fourth day we went to the High Desert Museum in the morning.  The Little Guy loved seeing all the animals, especially the otter, and the adults like the exhibits inside and out.  We lost the guys at the sawmill exhibit for a while.  They were totally immersed. 

Crater Lake

In the afternoon, we went to hike a Lava Cave.  Mind you, there were no disclaimers before you entered except that it was cold and to bring a jacket.  You had to have lights, so we rented lanterns.  For our party of 7, we rented two lanterns.  We should have had one more.  No one mentioned all the stairs you had to go down.  They weren't too bad and I figured it would be level walking when we finally got down there.  No way!  The bottom was uneven, rocky, and filled with potholes you had to be careful of.  Since we were walking by lantern light, they were hard to see.  I shouldn't have attempted it with my gimpy knees.  Finally, I decided to stop and wait for everyone without thinking about how dark it was going to be when they all left me.  Just a few minutes later the dark started to get to me and I had to yell and have them come back and rescue me.  Better to be in the dark all together than to be in the dark alone.  

Crater Lake

We walked quite a ways in and then the ceiling really dipped down.  I just couldn't imagine walking that way very long, so I again said I'd wait.  There were quite a few people at this place and it wasn't so dark.  Well, they hadn't gone very far when I realized the ceiling rose up again a few feet in, so I attached myself to another group and started on again.  Unfortunately, since I was on the outside of their circle, I tripped in a hole and banged my ankle pretty hard, but at the time I hardly noticed it.  I just wanted to catch up to my group.  I hiked about another quarter of a mile in with everyone until it hit a point at which you'd have to crawl.  At that point we turned around and started out.  It's amazing how much faster we hiked going out than we did going in!  

The stairs up were really tough with my now very sore knees and really sore ankle.  But I made it up and out.  I had really wanted to hike one of the lava tubes, but I have to say it was not what I expected.  We have done some caving in the past, but this was just a really long, rocky and sandy tube that went on forever.  When we got out, we figured out it was a 2.2 mile hike in the total dark over really rough terrain.  It was interesting, but I'm paying the price for it now.

Grandma and the Little Guy - It was windy.

We weren't sure how the Little Guy would do on such a long trip.  Since he and his parents were supposed to go camping this weekend, Elsie and I decided we'd leave a couple days early to get her back in time to get ready for their camping trip.  It was a good thing.  The Little Guy had had enough of riding in the car. 

I'll have some more pictures later.  We were only using one camera at a time, so some of the pictures are on others cameras.

~Jane