Dave Goes Outside: Bend and Newberry National Volcanic Monument

Part 2 of our glorious desert weekend.

After Smith Rock we headed south to stay the night in Bend, and explore the city. Bend is a cool little town obviously based entirely on tourism. We took a tour of Deschutes Brewery, sampled both 10 barrell brewery and Bend brewing company fare, walked around Drake Park on Mirror Pond, and drove up to the top of Pilot Butte.

On a bridge over Mirror Pond

View of the 3 Sisters and broken top from Pilot Butte, overlooking Bend facing West.

In between bouts of Bend, on Sunday morning we drove down to the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, a fascinating place to the south of Bend. The monument is deep in Deschutes National Forest and consists of many parts. There is the Newberry Caldera, the crater of a huge 4x6 mile potentially active Newberry Volcano. Inside the Caldera is one center peak, two big lakes, waterfalls, a giant Obsidian flow from the last eruption, one big ol mountain peak on one side, and more campsites than anywhere I've ever seen. It didn't build up like normal cascade volcanoes, but it has tons of tubes that resulted in vents and cinder cones that dot the landscape around it, places of smaller eruptions. This site give you a better idea of how it was made

You can drive up one of the many cinder cones, called Lava Butte. The top is a fire lookout and you can do a quick walk around the crater on the light red pumice.

The crater of Lava Butte

Mt Bachelor hiding in the clouds to the west

Overlooking Dechutes national forest and the lava flow from Lava Butte

The fire tower on Lava Butte

Looking up towards Bend. The red rock Pilot Butte can be seen rising from the flat town's east side.

The Crater parking lot

There are lava caves and lava flows you can explore, but we didn't have time for. We drove straight into the Caldera because we wanted a hike. Sadly, Paulina Peak was still snow covered and you couldn't drive to the top yet. We elected to drive to the very far end of East lake and hike to the viewpoint along the rim. We also took a quick stop in the Big Obsidian Flow and Paulina Falls, a beautiful little 100 foot falls.

Paulina Falls from the top

A piece of "dragonglass" from the Big Obsidian Flow

The Big Obsidian Flow landscape

Paulina from the bottom

Paulina falls

Both falls

We parked at the East Lake campground and began the 3 mile hike to the viewpoint, climbing the crater rim through pine trees, snow and sagebrush. We were basically alone, most campers had skipped out by then. The trail goes through the woods up a crease in the crater wall, then reaches the top and levels out for the final mile. After some poor signage that felt like they lied about distances, we reached the bare red pumice hills overlooking the crater and we got our last reward. We sat on the rocks and were amazed at how warm they were. We ate some snacks and felt like we conquered the world. Then we headed back and began the very long drive home.