Central Oregon

Visit to a Land of Water Wind and Fire

Part D: Central Oregon

The Cascades Lakes Scenic Highway

We finally managed to tear ourselves away from the Newberry National Volcanic Area. I had only scheduled us into this area for the shank end of our day coming in from Crater Lake, and the next day. And there was more we wanted to see. In particular, we wanted to drive the Cascades Lake Scenic Highway.

And so we left the Newberry Volcanic area and crossed over to the other side of US 97 and set off for the Cascades Lake highway. Now you have to understand that to date, we are still the "old fashioned" car travelers, meaning we do not have one of the GPS doo-dads that shout out directions, yell at you when you make a wrong turn, and otherwise let you know that it is far smarter than you. No, we still use a map (my how quaint!). And so, on our way over. . .we took a wrong turn.



But hey, in this country, you can take a wrong turn and even so have a good time and see spectacular scenery. And so it was, that when we should have turned left, . . . we turned right, and lo and behold several miles down the road found ourselves at the Falls River Fish Hatchery. But as I indicated, so what, we still had a good time.


Now, don't get me wrong, fish hatcheries are not really my "thing." Plus, I have been to several fish hatcheries here in West Virginia. So it wasn't the fish in the hatchery that made the stop for me. It was, rather, a very pretty, full flowing Fall River that was filled with some of the clearest, and coldest, water I had ever seen in a river. To find out how cold it was, I even stuck my hand in it. And believe me, you would never have believed it was the end of August! The water was that cold. And so J. and I walked up and down the river for a few minutes (A. stayed back at the car).


Once we got back to the car we got out our "trusty" map, figured out where we had gone wrong and proceeded to turn around and go back towards the Cascades Lake Scenic Highway. Finally, after passing where we had made our wrong turn and traveling on a bit further, we hit "paydirt." We were on the Cascades Lakes Scenic Highway.


I had figured on stopping at 3 points. As it was we ended up stopping 6 times. Unfortuantely, our first stop, Osprey Point, was a big disappointment. There was a trail there that led out to a lake. And there were supposed to be Osprey (hence the name) and other birds around. Well, we did see a platform that could have held an Osprey nest at one time, but if there had been a nest (and it looked doubtful that any bird had nested there for several breeding seasons) it was unoccupied at present. Well, I am sure that the end of August is not the right time of year to see Osprey nesting in these parts. However, contrary to our expectations, we saw few other birds. Oh, there were some gull-looking creatures, but we were far away from them. And so, after a few obligatory snap shots, we all moved on.


Our next stop was at the Little Lava Lake Campground. Little Lava Lake is reportedly the source of the Deschutes River. And since we had seen the Deschutes where it flows into the Columbia on our way in, and since Bend itself is located along the Deschutes and we had seen the river as it flowed through town, I thought it would add a nice touch to see where it began (over to the left in this photo).


As the day was moving on, we drove on down towards Mt. Bachelor and made a few quick stops for photos. One stop, in particular, was made in order to get a good shot of this famous ski slope. But really, Mt. Batchelor may be a great ski area, however as a scenic mountain, well, I've seen a lot better, both on this trip and in other places.


We finally stopped at the Dutchman's Flat area, just to the north of Mt. Batchelor. J. and I took off on a trail down to Dutchman's Flat. The trail doubles as a Cross Country ski trail during the winter months. Consequently, as we walked along the trail we saw many long, 20-30 foot tall poles on either side. These poles were, as J. noted, markers used by skiers in the winter. The tremendous amounts of snow in this area dictated that the poles be as high as they were. While he had never been here to cross country ski, J. assured me he had seen pictures of this trail and in those shots these "poles" appeared at times to be only about as tall, or a little taller, than the figures on the trail.



At any rate, eventually we came out on Dutchman's Flat which proved to be a bare spot, probably more
pumice desert such as we had seen at Crater Lake, with this wonderful-looking mountain as a backdrop. This mountain is called Brokentop. Obviously, it was of Volcanic origin, as most of the rest of the area was. And obviously, here too, the events surrounding its creation were a bit "unusual" to say the least. This seemed to be an emerging theme of this trip.