Weekend in Bend

We went to Bend this weekend. My mom and Keith are still in the area and had gone to the coast for a few days to visit Keith's sister. So we decided to meet them in Bend....

We got there a couple hours ahead of them and went to Pilot Butte State park. This was our view.

Then we found a playground for the kids to play on for a while.

Then we went to Tumalo State Park to climb around some rocks.

And this is where we met up with Grandma and Grandpa Redman.

We spent the afternoon walking around Bend...this is the Deshutes River in downtown Bend.

We met up with my cousin and his family for dinner. I didn't get any pictures.... On Saturday morning we visited the Old Mill area of Bend and then headed south.

We were hoping to go through the Lava Cast Forest, but we stupidly followed our GPS instead of the directions in the hiking book. It took us miles and miles and miles down gravel roads and we never did find the right forest road. When we finally got back to the main road and got our bearings, we were too tired of being in the car to try again.

This is a blue heron we saw land in this tree.

We decided to explore the Newberry Caldera. This is an aerial view I found on the web. You can see East Lake on the left and Paulina Lake on the right. In between is a smaller crater and also an inter lake lava flow. Towards the top of the picture, you can see the larger lava flow and Paulina Peak.

Here is another aerial view, probably taken from Paulina Peak.

This one shows Paulina Lake on the left and East Lake on the right with the Obsidian lava flow in the foreground.

We stopped at both Paulina Lake and East Lake. These are my pictures of East Lake.

This is the crater between the two lakes.

I'll do a separate post about the Obsidian Lava Flow....