6 22 BEND

We are really behind on our blogging. So, in order to catch up, I am going to post stuff without doing the usual sorting and organizing. So here we go.

We went to the lava casts forest, Newberry caldera saw Paulina falls, Obsidian lava flow (really nice on a sunny day to see the lava shine)

This is Paulina Falls.

View of Mt. Batchelor, near Bend

Life in the lava beds comes back slowly. Really weird to see a tree starting out.

Where do the roots go for nutrition?

The obsidian flow within the crater or caldera. Obsidian is lava glass and some of it is shiny and bright in the sunlight. We collected some obsidian outside of Lakeview, where it is legal to collect. You can come by and see it.

There is life within this vast flow of rock.

Then we went on to Lava Cast Forest. When the hot lava flowed over a living forest it was able to wrap around the trunk of the tree and cool before the tree caught fire. So when the tree burned up, a mold of the trunk was left in the cooled lava. (not a cast, the name is wrong).
This is a picture of the inside of the mold. As you can see, the lava was melted by the burning tree, which caused it to drip. We have seen this happen in lava tubes also.

When many trees get knocked down by the lava flow, you can get a log jam of casts. Doesn't this one look like a mean face?

Looking down a cast

Sometimes the lava builds up against the side of the trunk as it cools. This tells us which way the lava was flowing.

A long cast

Occasionally the trees are cast laying down. This is one.

Life within this lava flow.