More Little “Adventures” (09-20-17)

We left off in Bend Oregon. We have almost a week until the alignment so there was no rush to leave Bend.

We hiked for a few miles along the Deschutes River in nearby Newberry National Volcanic Monument.










We could have hiked up Lava Butte, but we drove, instead. Since there is limited parking, they give you  a timed ticket and you can only stay for a half hour. That was plenty of time.  You can still see the smoke in the air.









Lava, Lava, everywhere.

 This particular lava flow is a little unique. It contains over 70% silica, which means much of its content is glass. It’s very sharp and there are warnings about not letting dogs on the trail.

How sharp it it?  Obsidian blades can be sharpened at the molecular level, making them sharper than a steel scalpel.

More lava- in the shape of a tube, this time:

Lava River Cave is about a mile long and huge inside. It felt like a tunnel and it even goes under the highway.

Its quite cold, so you need to wear a fairly heavy coat to be comfortable. You also have to certify that none of your clothing or equipment has been in a cave in the last 10 years. White Nose Syndrome is killing millions of bats and can be carried on clothing from one cave to another.

It’s also very dark and they recommend you bring two sources of light. 

It wasn’t all that fun to explore, and frankly was a little boring, so we didn’t walk the whole mile.

Feeling done with lava, we moved from Bend down to Emigrant Lake, near Ashland Oregon.

Paul has been to Ashland many times. They are known for their Shakespearian plays, and on any given day, there will be 3-4 options of plays to see. Except on Mondays. I guess they are all closed on Monday.  So we arrived in time to see a play on Sunday.

We chose to see Shakespeare in Love, which wasn’t written by Shakespeare, but is about his life. It was fun. Before the play we meandered along the creek front, checking out all the stores and restaurants.

The whole downtown area is very walkable, with many restaurants and a huge park.  There are several water fountains that are always flowing- they contain Lithia water, which is very high in mineral content.  So high, in fact, that the water tastes disgusting.

We were both very happy with the change in the weather. It went from shorts weather to soup weather in a matter of days.  We were thrilled to finally be able to have a campfire!

We left the Ashland area last Tuesday, headed for Grants Pass, OR where we were supposed to get the axles aligned.  Yep, supposed to…..

Having arrived a day early, Paul met with the technicians who were going to do the alignment.  We got bad news and good news.  The bad news was that they didn’t have the equipment to align our axles properly.  The good news was that after looking at pictures of the old tires, showing the (lack of) wear, they said we couldn’t ask for much better, and we didn’t need an alignment. 

 Saved us a few hundred bucks and allowed us to move on early to our next adventure- Fresno, CA, home to Paul’s fraternity brothers.

Here birdie birdie!

Cavern Of Sonora TX(11-14-12)

“If you only go into one cave in your lifetime, go into this one”.  So says my husband, who has been in numerous caves, including Carlsbad Caverns.  What’s funny is that we found this cavern accidently.  After a brief but enjoyable visit with Paul’s mom, we headed clear across Texas and were on the hunt for a place to stop for the night, on the way to Austin.  The RV park that popped up in our path is called “Cavern of Sonora RV Park”.  Well, after seeing the name,  we googled to see if there are indeed caverns,  Trip Advisor rates this cavern as a 5 out of 5.  Pretty good!

We decided it was worth the stop, and booked two nights so we could take the 2 hour tour the next day.

This cave is very alive, and still growing. Unlike most other caves, it’s quite warm and humid in this cave.  Because the cave has no major openings, the carbon dioxide level is also higher than you would usually find. 

They actually monitor the carbon dioxide levels and when it’s raining outside, and therefore the humidity is at 100%, they open both “doors” to the cave to let fresh air in.

As we walked through the cave, we could visibly see the changes that were happening due to the moisture in the cave, causing the formations to grow. Water dripped on a regular basis.

There were only two other people on the tour with us, and our guide gave us a special treat.  She led us into a room that is no longer open to tours. The owner of the cave (it’s privately owned) got tired of people touching the cave formations and stopped people from going into the most beautiful room of all.  We all promised to be good, and she showed us a spectacular room!

Our guide did something pretty typical on a cave tour, but with a slightly different twist.  We came to an area with benches and she had us all sit down so she could turn off all the lights and have us experience total darkness. After explaining that even night vision goggles wouldn’t work in the cave because they have to have a tiny bit of light to magnify, she did an experiment.

After we had adjusted to the complete darkness, she had us hold the palm of our hand in front of our face, touching our nose, then bring it out about 4 inches.  She told us to wave our hand back and forth.  Amazingly,  I could see the shadow of my hand moving. Then she told us to close our eyes and wave our hand.  Oops,  I could still “see” the shadow moving.  Our brain expects to see it, so it does.

All in all, walking through the cavern felt like a Disney ride- quite surreal and totally amazing. There are more pictures of the cave if you click on Recent Pictures.