Three Weeks in Oregon

Woody was born in Newport, OR and went to grad school in Corvallis so he has been talking about Oregon for a while. I on the other hand have not spent much time in Oregon, so we decide to take the three weeks before we move back into our house to explore our state to the south.

 

We stared our Oregon trip with my sister Oriana and her family. They had rented a place in Sunriver and we went down to stay with them for the weekend.  Now you know by now that Woody and I love hot springs so when we read in our Hot springs book that there was a near by "dig your own" hot springs on the beach of Paulina lake (Newberry Crater) we decided to check them out.

It was a cold blustery day but the water that came up through the sand (as you dug your hole on the beach) was so hot you had to add cold lake water to cool it down.

That night woody and I watched the kids so Oriana and Darren could go out for a father's day dinner at the McMenamins in Bend.

The next day (Monday, June 18) we visited the lava fields, lava butte and the lava tube caves.

The Lava Tube caves were a very cool experience. Literally. It was about 40 degrees F in the cave and completely black. And even though, it was really pretty spooky, the girls did great and hardly complained at all. Woody, on the other hand, screamed so loud at the site of a spider we thought we were at risk of a cave-in.

After leaving the Dilley-Souers clan, we headed to Smith Rock, where we camped out for our first night on the road. Giovannina had never been to Smith Rock and thought it was mostly a spot for rock climbers, of which there were a plethora. But Smith also has spectacular hiking. Whether you're venturing up and over Misery Ridge - the name makes it sound worse than it is - or strolling along the banks of the Crooked River, Smith Rock amazes you at every turn. At eye-level, we watched a pair of ravens soar together 300 feet off the ground. We had lunch by the river and watched geese feed in the shallows while a kingfisher hovered overhead and deer grazed on the opposite shore. And of course, we watched crazy people attached to ropes cling to the sides of cliffs and dangle their bodies hundreds of feet in the air appearing to have a really good time (...that one's for Ryan.)