Journal

We finally managed to get down to the Bend, Oregon area for three days of sightseeing and hiking. We stayed at a surprisingly authentic adobe pueblo style house we found through AirBNB.

Our first stop was the High Desert Museum where we enjoyed lots of interesting historic displays and wildlife.

Next up was Lava Lands National Park. The park is very nicely developed and gets a lot of visitors. After getting our pass for the drive up to the top of the cinder cone, we noodled around the ranger station waiting for our departure time.

From the top of the cone there’s an expansive view of the surrounding lava flow below.

Down the highway a bit, we stopped at Glass Butte, a huge obsidian glass flow. The trial winds up and through the flow, literally like walking on shards of black glass. While signs strongly discourage taking your dog on the trail because of the glass, needless to say we passed a few clueless pet owners.

We had lunch at the vintage Paulina Lake Resort, then took the loop around Mt. Bachelor before heading back to Bend for dinner and a pub-crawl, making it to five of the local breweries.

Afterwards, we drove up to the top of Pilot Butte, in the middle of Bend, for the sunset.