Saturday, July 4, 2009

6 26 PAULINE PEAK

Today we decided to drive to the top of Pauline Peak (tho the day was a little hazy) and Century drive, that we thought from the maps we had, would take us to Sisters (a town).

First we went to the top of Paulina Peak which is actually the highest point on the Newberry Caldera. From there we had wonderful views of the volcanic area around Bend.

In the caldera are 2 lakes, Paulina and East Lakes. They used to be one lake until the mountain made cinder cones inside the caldera and separated the lake into 2 lakes.
view of Paulina Lake

One of the lava flows with Paulina lake in the background

more lava flows


Notice all the cinder cones in this picture. The whole area was just erupting like crazy back then.



View of Mount Jefferson from the peak



Turns out you can’t get there from here this time of year. We did drive around Mount Bachelor and see the ski area. We ended up right back at our hotel, without meaning to. We went Sisters to see the beginning of the Metolius River. It starts from 2 springs coming out of the ground with enough water to have a full sized river. Neat. And we helped, or tried to, feed peanuts to the ground squirrels. There were a half dozen people feeding them. They didn’t need to take any from us. It was fun to watch, since they would sit there and open the nuts right in front of you. They made lots of noise doing it, too.

No comments: