We woke up to a beautiful sunny, crisp, fall day. Unfortunately, the forecast is for the sun to disappear for a couple of days, the temperature to drop and the rains to hit within the next 24 hours. So we have decided to leave tomorrow to avoid further cold, damp, weather. Before that we decided to return to the south portion of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument that is open.We visited both lakes, East and Paulina, and enjoyed walks on the very quiet beaches. We also had nice hike downstream from Paulina Lake to view Paulina Falls. The park/monument was mostly deserted, while the limited staff prepares to shut it down for the winter. It appears that the park will be completely closed in a couple of weeks, but will reopen in DEC/JAN for winter recreation.
We were also to hike a short distance to see an extremely large obsidian flow that was the result of volcanic activity over 1100 years ago. Dan remarked how the landscape looked like the moon. Turns out this area was used to train Apollo astronauts for lunar landings! Even in this barren landscape you find signs of life like naturally created “bonsai” trees growing out of the smallest of cracks. The landscape was extremely stark and scenic; we’ll just have to catch the main attractions of the Monument another time.
1 comment:
Ok, we have added this area to the must visit list.
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