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Aug 9-11: Having sipped at the cool well of friendship in Walla Walla, we headed south on Rt. 11 to Pendleton, had lunch in the park next to the rodeo stadium (we've found that every western town seems to have a lovely verdant park—and most towns are by some water source), then south on Rt. 395 through grassland and range country and on up into Umatilla National Forest. Thanks, Jerry, for the recommendation of the forested state park at Dale. We had it all to ourselves!! We like to pull in early, so we have time for reading, walking, whatever.
Next day was a big driving day, and we got an uncharacteristically early start because I had lost track of my sunglasses and didn't want to be heading due west in the afternoon without them. So we were already crossing back through John Day Fossil country by mid-morning and had lunch at the lovely huge town park at Prineville, where I caught up on my blog. Then we located the Prineville Public Library (a very beautiful and well-equipped place, quite alive with visitors) and had our internet fix.
By evening we found to our frustration that Tumalo State Park judt north of Bend was full--on a Tuesday night! But two days later Phil heard on NPR-National Public Radio—that tourism was down in the Northwest, EXCEPT for Bend, where it was up by 1%. Anyway, by this time it was getting quite late so we had a restaurant meal and stayed in an exceedingly shoddy motel. I'm sure Bend has mostly nice places, but this one might have been the cheapest. It did have wifi.
There are some days when you take pictures and others when you don't. Wednesday morning we headed into the High Desert Museum just south of Bend (thanks to recommendations from both Bobbie Dolp and Jerry Hartman) and it was totally wonderful. Used to the usual museum rules, I left my camera in the van, so I have nothing to show you, but this was a very different kind of museum. Lots of it is spread out through the wooded lands, including the Birds of Prey building, the otters area, the homesteader's cabin, the sawmill and more. The museum was awash with cheerful volunteers, from teenagers to retired folk. In our few hours there we saw heaps, including a live gila monster, rattlesnakes, scorpions, desert tortoises and lots of fish. On one tour we learned how to identify the manzanita bush, bitter brush, Ponderosa pines, lodgepole pines (OK you Portlanders—it was new to us. Can you tell the difference between a snow gum, a paperbark and sheoak?) and we were told why the aspen tree will produce so many others if you plant one in your yard (it propagates by sending out runners which shoot) and why its leaves quake. We also went to the talk on wildlife of the high desert, and without giving it all away, I'll just say, you got up close and personal to the creatures and the falconers staged a choreographed show with various raptors.
This museum is a great place for young children. It has an outdoor playground which encourages kids to “Dig, crawl and climb” and a large indoor playroom with rocky outcrops to climb, replete with costumes and puppets of desert creatures.
Throughout the grounds are fabulous brass statues of wild high desert animals. There's a cafe for lunch, if you didn't pack one, and a gift shop for sending things back to those who aren't with you.
That night we were nervous about finding a campsite, so we booked in early at LaPine State Park and had time to enjoy a 2-hour walk along the banks of the Deschutes River and a look at “The Big Tree” which is the biggest Ponderosa Pine in Oregon.
Thursday morning it was off to “Lava Land”. We drove up the tightly spiralling road of Lava Butte (8% incline)--a 500 ft high volcanic cone--and took the rim walk—most of the pictures in this blog are from this adventure. Then we checked out the Lava Lands Visitors Center and got boned up on volcanic information, then walked across the high fields of volcanic rock behind the center.
See below. And for those of you who couldn't find the picture of Bonnie's art work, the last blog had a page two—you can still go to it. I guess I put up too many pictures last time. Will try to be more constrained by the page size of this blog format.
BLOG HINT: Click on any picture to see the bigger version!!!

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