The first night we stayed at Pine Mountain south of Bend, where my friend is the manager of the Pine Mountain Observatory. When we arrived, there was a fire on the true summit from a lightning strike the previous evening. The observatory is actually on a lower ridge and was not under immediate threat from the fire. This peak is popular for hang-gliders and is known as the paraport. Here you can see a plane approaching to drop some retardant:
Firefighters soon arrived to put out the small spots and guard the periphery. When we felt confident the fire was under control, we took a ride to nearby East Butte to visit a friend who was staffing the fire tower. From here we could see several active fires in the area.
The next day had an inauspicious start:
The roads are rough out there! After changing the tire, I had to drive back in to Bend and I ended up getting four new tires. We finally made it to Ft Rock, which looks best viewed from a distance:
Then we spent the night in a cabin at Summer Lake:
OK, I guess it's not an actual lake, more of an alkali flat ringed with marshes, but it does fill with water in the wet season. That's winter Rim above it, and you can hike the Fremont trail along the top(we didn't), just be prepared to share your trail with cows.
Evan's favorite place was "Crack in the Ground" which is over a mile long, what a hoot!:
We also visited the Devil's Garden and Derrick's Cave, which is a lava tube like the Ape Cave. It's not as long, only about 1/4 mile, but the lava lands above the cave were dotted with a bunch of other little caves, and crazy jumbled lava features. Here's a really cool hole we came upon:
Hard to tell in the picture, but the hole above is about 20 feet deep, 150 feet across and the Pondy in the middle was huge!
Splatter Cone:
We ate at the Cowboy Dinner Tree near Silver Lake, which I recommend for the novelty only:
We camped near Hager Mountain and hiked up the next morning. This hike is described in Sullivan's 100 hikes of Eastern Oregon. We took the easiest of the three routes which involved about a mile hike gaining 800 feet. It was a steep hike for Evan bent he was pretty happy when we got out of the trees:
Hager mountain also has a staffed lookout, and the lady up there told us her southern views had been obscured for a month from the California fires. This day was spectacular offering views of Winter Rim to the East, Fremont NF to the south, Mt Scott, Thielsen and Diamond Peak in the west, and the flat desert and lavalands to the north:
We also visited Bald Butte which has a rentable lookout building:
More pictures here
