When You Get to a Bend in the River, Stop

The river would be the Deschutes and the bend would be Bend, OR.

Tons of breweries, restaurants, outdoorsy denizens, restored artsy/fartsy downtown, wealthy retirees from southern CA/Seattle/Portland and a whole lot of folks doing the minimum wage work for the tourists...oh yeh, and lots of tourists. Traffic in this town of 80,000 was horrendous and don't get me started on the parking.

Bend was also extremely warm with daytime highs over 100 which necessitated our need for a legit RV park with full hook ups for AC. We heard the Crown Villa RV Park being recommended as the best park in Bend and it was OK...I need to preface that brief review by saying we're not fans of most RV parks and this one was no exception. But man, that AC felt good when trying to get some sleep at night. Besides we didn't spend much time around the park as we were out and about in Bend doing things so it worked well for us.

Stayed 2 nites and hit the town which was a lot of fun with fine dining and a sampling of the many breweries scattered around the area. Our favorite was the Deschutes Brewery boasting a decent restaurant with comfortable ambience, very nice repaste.

On our last nite there we spent a couple of hours at the Bend Brewfest held in the shadow of the Deschutes Brewery alongside the river at the Les Schwab Ampitheater...for those not familiar, Les Schwab is a chain of tire stores in the NW and apparently ole Lester is doing just fine.

The brewfest went great with 137 breweries represented, most of which were smaller start ups trying to get their businesses going. We sampled some great beers, listened to the music and mostly people watched - one of our most fav-o-rite things to do. The crowd was friendly, laid back and all happy to be enjoying a summer evening drinking beer and relaxing next to the beautiful river. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and glad we went. I guess they have lots of these during the summer but I must say it was well attended (long lines to get in when we left around 9 PM) and very well done...a good deal for sure.

We found Bend to be a wonderful place that has been seriously discovered by outsiders. In talking with locals they certainly lament the passing of the good old days and are trying to adjust to the influx of wealthy newcomers to town...in a word, hipsters. I can understand, there's not a whole lot of diversity in Bend these days. But for the casual visitor spending a few days it's a lot of fun - not sure I could live there though. Although having breathtakingly beautiful mountains with hiking/biking/skiing mere minutes away and the rapids and waterfalls of the Deschutes River running thru town with kayaking/floating/fishing is appealing.

Here's the weird thing, in going back thru my photo files I have none, zip, nada from Bend...interesting, guess we were too busy doing things to take any photos.

So in order to add some photos for this post let's move on to our next stop at Crater Lake, OR.

We heard the campsites at Crater Lake NP fill up fast so we made reservations at the Mazama Campground for Sunday and Monday nites. We left Bend on Saturday so that left us open for that nite to find a nice spot. About 5 miles from Crater Lake is a drop dead gorgeous spot called Diamond Lake and we checked into the campground there around noon. Debbie suggested we rent a boat for the day so we did, great call cruise director! We putzed around the perimeter of the lake and had a lot of laughs on a bright sunny afternoon under the watchful gaze of active volcano Mt. Thielsen.

Here's Debbie under the crown of magnificent Mt. Thielsen...

El Capitano at the helm....

Next morning I biked the lake trail which goes around Diamond Lake, packed up and headed into Crater Lake NP and set up in the Mazama Campground at the south end of the park, nice camp with sites affording much privacy and quiet, more our speed.

Crater Lake was formed about 7700 years ago after the mountain/volcano Mt. Mazama had her final send off with one enormous eruption. The eruption was so massive it emptied the magma chamber below her core and the resulting caldera collapsed due to its weight and no support beneath. Perhaps the most studied and least understood volcano in the world her caldera collapsed in a matter of a few days, maybe a month at the most. Lava poured down the hillsides at over 200 miles per hour, every living thing within it's path was vaporized in minutes and ash from the blast has been recently discovered in ice cores from Greenland. 50 cubic MILES of material was ejected from her innards. They reckon it took about 400 years for the resulting cavity to fill with water although recent studies seem to suggest that during that 400 year span a long term drought had affected the region so some estimates say it might have taken 2000 years to fill.

The lake gets all it's water from annual precipitation that falls within the lake - no outside water from creeks, rivers, etc flows into the lake - this also makes it one of the purest/clearest bodies of waters in the world. Crater Lake receives on average 50 feet of snow each year which supplies most of the input to the water balance equation. The output is mostly evaporation from the lake surface - 26 sq miles - and some leakage due to cracks/fissures in the caldera but it is 80% from evaporation. Get this, the water surface level on average over the past 100 years has never changed more/less than 3-4 feet on a yearly basis. It is also the deepest lake in the US with it's deepest point at 1,943 feet.
And the color, my god, the color...the most striking blue you could imagine making it the most beautiful body of water I have ever seen. Honestly, I can't think of any nicer water body.


Did a sunrise walk up to Garfield Peak...great views of the lake.

Took an evening stroll down along Annie Creek...on those hillsides you're looking at 8000 years of erosion.

And on out to the Pinnacles...the hoo doos that you see are ancient vent tubes or fumaroles from prior eruptions. During an eruption gasses eminate thru these vents and chemically change the composition of the soil making them harder to erode than the surrounding material. Thus, the old vent tubes remain intact as pinnacles/hoo dos while everything else around it erodes away.

Remember back in Olympic NP I did a post on mythology vs science...well, here's another example for you to digest from Crater Lake.

The Legend of the Creation of Crater Lake:
The Chief of the Below World fell in love with Loha, the daughter of another Chief. He invited her to live with him in his home under his volcano (Mt. Mazama) and promised her eternal life free of sickness, sorrow and death. She thought about it and decided that spending eternity inside the bottom of a volcano with this a-hole wasn't such a good deal. No thanks Chief, I'll take my chances with someone else. His response to her spurn was to stand on top of the mountain threatening her people with a "Curse of Fire" at which time the mountains shook (pre eruption seismic activity), red hot rocks hurtled down (lava flow) and burning ashes fell like rain (airborn pumice at 2000 degrees F). Two brave medicine men from her tribe jumped into the fiery cauldron and upon seeing this act of bravery from his perch atop nearby Mt. Shasta (one hundred miles to the south), the Chief of the Above World caused the caldera to collapse to snuff out the Chief of the Below World. And to further keep the little shit from tossing anymore fiery rocks in the future, the Above World Chief caused many years of rain and snow to submerge his collapsed home/mountain under 2000 feet of water. There...that ought to fix the little bastard. Then years of peace filled the land and all was well in the kingdom.

Once again it seems Native Americans had it right. Although their explanation is couched in terms of spirits and legends, it is essentially an accurate description of what modern geologic study has determined. And as their legend has been passed down thru many generations and archaelogical evidence has confirmed their existence here at the time of the eruption, their ancestors were most certainly eye witnesses to this extraordinary event...pretty cool I say.

Now here's the interesting part - this legend was told to a couple of geologists back in the 1930's by local Native Americans. They conducted field studies and found that this legend of eruption, collapse of the caldera and eventual lake filling had a strong basis in scientific fact...it was also critized and deemed unlikely by the general scientific community at the time. After many years of research and scientific thought it is today the established and accepted theory on how Crater Lake was formed. I really love this shit, hope you do too.

One final thought...so, dear readers...what sayeth ye - science or mythology? I'm still in deep thought over this one, but let me tell you - it is one damned interesting question to ponder. Your comments and feelings about this would be most appreciated, I need some guidance here.

Live update - this just happened as I was writing this. An old guy was pulling out of his campsite in a HUGE Class A RV and I hear the painful crunch of tree branches and metal twisting. He must not have heard it becase he kept moving forward and the horrifying noise lasted for a good 30 seconds. I gave it a quick look and he managed to pull the entire back section of his motorhome off, you could see inside the bedroom - they had orangish colored (peach??) pillows. Holy crap, I feel so bad for this man but what can you do? Ah, the RV lifestyle, ain't it great? He'll get it figured out and with a lot of cash be back on the road in no time, whoo boy.
Some hours later it appeared that he had the necessary temporary repairs about him (duct tape and bailing wire) and rolled on down the road...McGyver lives on!! Whatever gets you down the road I say and but for the grace of God go we...how Irish am I?

Sorry, no pics guys - I didn't have the heart to pull out the camera, given the circumstances.

Nothing more interesting to report now loyal followers...stay tuned as we are now back home in the Golden State and southbound and down. On to Mt. Shasta and then Lassen Volcanic National Park - we're following the Volcano Trail...report to follow asap.