Lava River Cave

On the morning of September 5 after a filling dinner of steak and mashed potatoes the night before at Kayo's Roadhouse and a comfortable bed at Sleep Inn in Bend, we re-packed the car in anticipation of the day's drive. Having cleaned off all the dirty/muddy camping gear, reorganized the cooler, and cleaned the camping dishes, the drive promised to be much more organized and not quite so musty/smelly as the day before.

We departed the hotel just after 10am, stopped for gas, and headed to Lava River Cave, just south of Bend. Because of the Newberry Volcano, there are lots of lava "features" around this area, and we had a plan: see as much as we could see before we had to be on the road toward Frenchglen. Working backward from the time we had to be there (6pm for dinner) we determined we had to leave Bend no later than 2:00 PM. After the Lava River Cave and lunch at Taco Time, we were out of time and had to head on down the road. The area around Bend was fascinating -- I would've easily spent another entire day there had the time been available.

Darrick in the Lava River Cave