Shaniko and the Newberry volcanic national park lava tube

Saturday we got up headed to Hermiston and picked up my sister and got on the road for Bend, headed for the lava flow tube cave that is part of the Newberry volcanic national park just south of Bend.

Stopped along the way to stretch at the DeMoss springs memorial park. Its a nice little park along the Way.

Then of course we always have to stop at Shaniko and do the touristy thing.

My mom has a sleigh exactly like this that she is giving us.

Levi's friends were the strong silent type.

Never heard a peep out of them.

Couple of jail birds.

At least they have coffee

Then we made it to the Lava Tube, and finally found parking. The tube is free to go into, you just have to have a parking pass, sit through a 5 minute orientation, sign in, and away you go. You can rent a flashlight for $5, we brought headlamps and flashlights with us. Christa and i made the mistake years ago of not having a good light source. The cave is 1 mile long and takes on average of 1.5 hours.

The cave entrance is 155 steps in and as you get closer you can feel the temperature change. The beginning of the tube has a nice walk way and hand railing.

didnt exactly get us all in lol

Shortly into it though it gets pitch black

The height of the ceiling varied through out the tube, this was not the lowest section. the lowest section we all had to hunch over and even Levi had to duck (or hit his head which he did on the way out)

When we were done we had dinner in Bend at the Pine Tavern restaurant and bar, built in 1936 with a large Ponderosa Pine growing up through the middle of the dining area. Very good food, steaks are a little spendy but we all had pasta and there were no complaints except how were we gonna eat it all.

On our way back we stopped at the Mountain Identifier outside of Shaniko, We should have stopped in the morning when we could see the mountains better, by afternoon the sun was in our eyes and the smoke had rolled in. From this viewpoint the Cascade Range is visible from Broken top (75 miles south), 3 Sisters, MT Hood, MT Jefferson, MT Adams, mt baker, and mt Rainier (135 miles north)

In the end it was an all day trip leaving Prosser at 6AM and getting back home at Midnight and we didnt have enough time to do half of what was planned. We love this area of Oregon and there is so much to do, we need to plan a long weekend camping trip.