Oregon Trip: Sight-Seeing in Sunriver

On Monday, the weather forecast looked awful. The skies were clear over our condo, but all of the weather sites promised that we were wrong, it was actually cold, raining and snowing outside. Mark and I relaxed for a while, but eventually we decided to get out for as long as we could. The rest of the family had arrived the previous Thursday, and had already done some local sight-seeing. Mark and I decided Monday was as good of a day as any to enjoy the local Oregon features.

I wandered around the resort at first, taking pictures of the lovely yellow aspens and the clear blue skies. There’s a lot of photos from the day in the gallery.

We then drove a few miles south to check out Newberry National Volcanic Monument. This area of mountains, forests, lakes and rivers contains a huge portion of the regions surrounding Sunriver, but we wanted to see some Oregonian waterfalls and the Big Obsidian flow.

The Obsidian flow was all it promised to be. A huge mountainside covered in sharp, glossy black obsidian and pumice rocks. The flow was a mere 1200 years old, and I wondered what it might have been like to be living in the area when this volcano erupted. The rocks were sharp, and beautiful. It looked like great stuff to make knifes and arrowheads out of, but none of the local museums and Indian stores carried obsidian replicas. Too bad.

On our hike off the flow, the sky darkened, and we started getting snowed on. Regardless, we hiked out to see the waterfalls at the mouth of the lake. The dark, overcast skies made for perfect waterfall shots, and I worked that camera until my fingers and face were numb.

And now, one more shot from the day. Mark caught this sign on the way into the monument. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it until Mark pointed it out to me. Looks like Oregon is getting good work from their inmates!