Day 20: Bend, Lava Land, Newberry Crater, and LaPine State Park

David wakes up early and so we leave around 9:30 a.m. The way to downtown Bend is short. We manage to find a suitable parking space and then we walk through downtown. Bend is a city that grew big because of sawmills, but when they had to close, the transformation and orientation towards tourism came. After all, in the region you can go skiing, hiking, biking, and paddling. Ideal conditions for the growth that the city is undergoing. The population has increased from 17,000 (1980) to 81,000 (2013). The travel guide writes that the city is very worth seeing and that you must visit downtown. We stroll through the 2 streets and it's nice. Small cafes and breweries, stores with trinkets and small boutiques. It has charm and we visit the small park by the river and finish the city tour after an hour. We are not fans of shopping. One attraction in Bend is Pilot Butte, another testimony to volcanic activity. We drive in the roundabout to the 120-meter high hill and enjoy the view of Bend and the surrounding mountains and forests. We are not sure if we are allowed to drive the camper up. The sign is so bad and faded. Well, it's not crowded and there is enough space. After 10 minutes, we go downhill again. It's noon and we're hungry. We eat at the Mongolian restaurant and sit at the table. David is in a high chair. It's not fast enough for him and he throws himself backwards. Suddenly, he slips through the chair and falls down. Rene reacts quickly and pulls him up by his arm. He prevented worse from happening. What a scare. David cries, but I can quickly calm him down. After that, he prefers to sit on my lap.
10 minutes outside the city is Lava Land with the Lava Butte. Again, a small 6,150-year-old volcano. We visit the exhibition and hike through the lava landscape. Erik is now a Junior Forest Ranger and collects his 8th badge. He really wants to take the shuttle bus to the edge of the volcano crater. The price of $2 per person is reasonable. We arrive directly at the edge and look into the crater. Some trees grow there and a short circular path leads around it. After 20 minutes, we sit back down on the bus. The view was great and we are surprised by it. It is still too early to drive to the campground, so we head to Newberry Crater. This massive shield volcano, similar to Mount Etna in Sicily, poured its basalt as flat-lying sheets into the land 500,000 years ago. Its summit collapsed when the magma chambers underneath it were empty. What remained was a crater with 2 lakes inside. The trail is longer than expected, so we only arrive at the parking lot around 4:30 p.m. Erik and David fall asleep in the car during the drive. We choose a hike to the Big Obsidian Flow. An interpretive trail leads through the fragmented desert where obsidian mixes with layers of dark and light pumice. Obsidian is glass with over 72 percent silicon, where the silicon could not crystallize. The Native Americans made arrowheads and tools out of it. Erik is in a bad mood. He sulks and screams for the first meters. He doesn't want to walk. The other visitors smile at his behavior. In the forest, he complains that it's boring and that he doesn't want to see any trees. We just keep walking. Then we climb up a staircase, and he still protests. Once we reach the top, the rocky landscape begins. The trail consists of loose rocks and partly unsecured stone steps. Suddenly, Erik is completely thrilled and suddenly stops complaining. He runs ahead and shows us the way. We tease him a little about his behavior and he even laughs about it himself. Once we reach the top, we look out over the crater lake and the volcanic landscape. The descent is quickly done. There is a waterfall nearby and we stop to admire it. It is already shortly before 6 p.m. and we reach our campground at LaPine State Park 20 minutes later. After dinner, we sit by the campfire with roasted marshmallows.