After the Painted Hills, we drove further south and camped up on Pine Mountain, where there is also an observatory run by the University of Oregon. After hiking to the top of Pine Mtn, we drove to Bend, where we had an amazing breakfast at The Victorian Cafe. Then, for the rest of the day, we drove around Bend, checking out some shops until camping at Skull Hollow to the north.
The next day we drove further south, stopping at the Bend REI and then heading to the Paulina Lakes at the Newberry National Volcanic Monument and hiking up the 1300 year old Big Obsidian Flow, which is actually the youngest volcanic lava flow in Oregon. The photo at the top of this blog post shows the edge of the massive basalt and volcanic glass lava flow and photo 29 in the gallery also shows how deep this flow is at its edge in spots, dwarfing some fairly tall trees right next to it. Photos 10, 20 and 27 show some good views of this black volcanic glass, which is formed by rapid cooling of magma which had minimal water and gas content, rapid enough to not allow the molten minerals to crystallize. After hiking around the obsidian flow and taking some photos, we started heading north again, through Bend and camping at the Postpile Campground on the Crooked River.
Read: All the blog postings from my 2023 Oregon Trip
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