Into Oregon, Volcano Country

We left California entirely behind as we moved into a lushly green forested land. Oregon has some stunning mountain scenery poking up from among the trees. The land formations in this part of the country were not made the same way as those in Utah. Oregon has actual volcanoes considered still active by those who know such things, even though none has done any more than burp in recent times.

“If I hadn't seen Utah first,” John lamented at one scenic point, as he and Debbie rounded a corner to find a panoramic valley laid out before them, interrupted by hills and fringed with mountains  The scene was as vast and beautiful as we had encountered further south. Just more green, is all.

After searching around a bit, we found Crater Lake. It has no shores to speak of, just high rocky walls all around that slowly erode into the lake with each spring's snowmelt.  ''I will never see this blue a blue again,” mused Debbie. This lake is extremely deep, more so than any of the Great Lakes. John was asking himself if this were a meteoric lake, when the two of us learned there was nothing alien about it. Geologists had puzzled out that the ancient lava-built mountain that had stood here originally, Mount Mazama, had a huge magma chamber deep under it. Seemingly in unique coincidence, it sprouted cracks to the surface all around the perimeter and, all at the same time, they began venting magma high into the air in the form of pumice, ash, and hot gasses. When these simultaneous eruptions were done, there was not much left in the chamber underneath, so the entire top of the mountain collapsed into what, essentially, was the empty basement. They figure that happened in just two or three hours. Or maybe days. They're not sure, but it would've been fun to watch, yes?

Wizard Island is a volcano in a volcano

The blue results from the 1900 foot depth

A few centuries of heavy snow (44 feet per year!) melting each spring filled the bowl that remained and it has stayed this way ever since. Only melted snow goes in. Only evaporation (and a like amount of mysterious underground seepage) goes out.  Crater Lake has been like this for about 7-1/2 thousand years.  A new volcano erupted, beginning to grow inside the lake, forming an island inside the crater. All these will erupt again. Some day. Scientists do not expect it will be anytime soon, however.

There have been more recent volcanoes. From Bend, OR, we were able to climb up and into some of them. Lava Lands National Park has an “active volcano” that spewed

molten lava 1,300 years ago, the most recent of any in that state. The type of magma made a volcanic glass called obsidian. Debbie climbed a steep stair to wander among many acres of this “glass rock”. Park Rangers tell us the Indians in that area would come to that area to gather shards for making arrowheads. Obsidian glass holds a very sharp knife edge, much like the “ceramic knife” you may have in your kitchen.

Nearby, the Mackenzie-Santiam Scenic Byway drive took us up the cindercones of other volcanoes. During the Depression, a government CCC project built an observatory near the top of Belknap Crater.

From here you see several area mountains, including some of the more famous. If you're adventurous, you can park and hike across the tumbled boulders inside the currently dormant cones of these things.

Get this view while picking the
blueberries in the foreground!

We're going to meet with John's brother, Bill, and his wife, Alex, near Seattle in mid-July, so Debbie's frantic plans to get us situated for this heavy tourist month took us from the area around Bend a bit farther north to Parkdale. It's a small town that would have remained unknown to us except that a farm near there is one in the Harvest Host association (see our #3).  Montavon's Berry Farm is a U-Pick operation for raspberries, blueberries, and

cherries. When we parked the Bry RV there, we discovered it faces another volcano, Mount Hood. John and Debbie picked a few pounds of cherries, looking up at the mountain the entire time. It was the first thing we saw out our motor coach's windshield each morning and the last thing at night. We would take our appetizer and drinks outside just to look at it in the evening.

Here's one more since we can't get enough of this view:

Further north, the Columbia River flows along a huge valley created by much more ancient volcanic flows, then eroded by the water flow.

Here the river flows along I-84 headed for the Pacific Ocean, behind us, to the west. The water in the river comes from smaller rivers all along its route, but because the surrounding land is so high –and because the big river has cut so deeply into the volcanic debris that covers the state-- many of those smaller rivers become stunning waterfalls. One of the more spectacular is Multnomah Falls. 

You can see it's quite popular, too (and this was a mid-week Thursday). The small parking lot and the narrow two-lane US-30 were just overwhelmed. We spent a good half-hour creeping ahead until we, too, could park and explore. 

Crossing the river, we crossed the state line into Washington, where the most famous and still very active volcano of our times is Mount St Helens. (Debbie allows that Hawaiians may disagree.) This is what it looks like today, nearly 40 years after the top 1,300 feet of the mountain disappeared in 1980, much of it falling into the valley below, but some of it becoming thick clouds of debris that drifted around the world in the weeks after the eruption.  The landslide was 3.3 billion cubic yards, equivalent to 1 million Olympic swimming pools.

The ranger suggested that to visualize the amount of mass removed from the mountain by the landslide, draw a line using the angle of the remaining sides to see how much of the mountain fell down into the valley below.

Fifty-seven people died that Sunday despite the blast's effects extending out many, many miles. Population density around here is nowhere near what you're used to back East.

Next  up:  Bill and Alex.