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Chipmunk
These guys were all over the lava rock. Here one of them is eating some apricot that some German's threw out. We arrived in Bend Friday night and visited with LeAnne’s friend Marja. We had a good time visiting with her & LeAnne enjoyed catching up. We decided that we'd spend the next day letterboxing around the area to be able to visit the local parks. Our first full day in Bend we spent down at the Lava Cast Forest and the Lava River Cave. Bend, Oregon is the site of massive volcanic activity that took place over 6,000 years ago. This created an entire ‘forest’ of volcanic rock that came from the Newberry Volcano. We walked around the area down a trail that cuts through the porous rock and takes you to a viewpoint overlooking the valley on to Mount Bachelor. The area has a few seedlings here and there, but for the most part is bare. There are numerous chipmunks that run and play in and around the boulders of lava rock, and they are fairly fearless to the humans as they look for handouts.
Down the road is the Lava River Cave which formed when the hot, molten lava cooled rapidly on top as it was flowing, but the lava underneath continued to burn out a
Bird's Eye View
We IDed this bird from the Sibley Bird Guide as a Clark's Nutcracker. tube. We rushed to get there, because it was already late in the afternoon & the park closed at 4:45 p.m. By the time we got there, we only had 45 minutes to run in, so the guy at the booth let us in for free. We had to take a lantern because it was so dark in there. It was also pretty cold - at 42 degrees, there were ice stalagmites just inside the cave. Our ultimate goal was a letterbox that lay over a half-mile inside the cave, so we booked it through the dark. It was exciting. We let Marja 'find' the letterbox, as this was her first one. She seemed pretty stoked about it, and as we sat there signing the logbooks, we had some passerby's that became interested, so we were able to introduce some new folks to the fun of letterboxing. Once we were done, we literally ran out to the entrance of the cave, where just at the mouth, we were able to catch up to the last of the people who were exiting.
After this, we thought we'd go for 3 more letterboxes in another park called Sawyer Park. My
Reclaiming the Ancient Volcanic Rock
This is just part of the huge field of volcanic rock. camera battery died just as we entered the park, so we can only tell you about this one. There was a creek that ran through the middle of it, with plenty of fly-fisherpeople working the fish. We walked along the bank of the water, and occassionally as we would stop, we could look out onto the water and see the same white swan who seemed to be following us. I guess she/he wanted some food. We also saw several families of goslings with their Canadian geese parents. I was told that Canadian geese can be quite aggressive, so naturally, I had to check it out myself. Yep, they hissed at me as I approached. Mean. As they herded their chillins away, they appeared to be doing some sort of Egyptian neck dance. We saw a wood duck mamma with it's babies, which was pretty cute, because they looked like they were half sunk in the water, barely floating. One of the most interesting views of wildlife we saw here, though, was an osprey who evidently was scoping out a smaller bird's nest. There were 2 birds that were attacking it as it swooped around in a circle, obviously upset.
Ice at the Entrance to the Cave
This is the large ice stalagmites located at the entrance of the 42 degree cave. We finished the afternoon up by heading to Longboard Louies for dinner, and along the way a guy stopped to ask us for 'a dollar for food.' Marja told him that he could have our leftovers, if we had any. So we got there and ordered salmon & shrimp tacos complete with beans and rice. We were all sitting there enjoying our dinners when out of nowhere, I crunched down on something awfully hard - like a rock. I pulled 2 small rocks out of my mouth that had been cooked with the beans! On the way back from the restaurant, we ran into the same guy again, and he's like, "Aww, did I miss you?" We told him, no, we just didn't have any leftovers. So he replied, "Oh, ok. Well, do you have some weed?" I guess he's real hungry, huh?
After dinner, we headed downtown to a small venue where 2 girls were playing who billed themselves as "The Erins." There wasn't hardly any room in the whole joint, so we picked out a spot on the floor near the stage & just sat and enjoyed the acoustics. It was one gal with a
guitar from New Zealand who did the main vocals, and a backup harmonizer who played the fiddle. On the way home, we were scatting down the street, which is a form of jazzy be-bop that you say with your mouth. Which probably explains why I woke everyone up in the middle of the night because I was yelling out a scat in the middle of my sleep. I got told that the previous night I was running somewhere, too. More to come on that, obviously. I never even knew that I was so active in my sleep.
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bettina evans
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letterboxing
Now maria will be hooked.....you guys are contagious. Love you MOM