Flutterby™! : More Oregon Trip

I'm posting these backwards in small chunks. To see the whole thing in sequence (kinda), you can check out the November 2003 Oregon Trip topic once it's all posted.

Because of the difficulties with making reservations on Thanksgiving evening we called ahead to Hunter's Resort, recently purchased by a guy from New York who by his own account is trying to slow down and adapt to life in the country. Steve says Ed is the only TV show he watches religiously, because the bowling alley they film it in is right next to his house back east, but I think there's something a little more common about the experiences.

He lets a local guy run the restaurant, which means it's way too cheap to be sustainable (and, while it was the most we paid for a room on the trip, $55 isn't bad for a place with a winter-usable pool), although reasonably good with very nice service. After dinner we floated in the hot springs fed 105F degree pool (being careful to not slip on the ice surrounding the pool). The next morning we spent some time looking at the neighboring geyser (appears to be capped, but we forgot to ask) which erupts every minute or two, scaring the ducks, then wandered over to the Lake County Chamber of Commerce to talk to Cora (I think I got her name right). Given the snow on the ground we decide to postpone rock hunting to a later trip (lots of sunstones and agates and similar semi-precious stones) and head north.

First stop is at the Abert Rim, a 30 mile long 2000 foot high rift along a fault line. We gawk for a bit, then head up along the other side of the valley, tumbleweeds rolling across the highway, dust blowing up from dry lake beds, up to Fort Rock.

Fort Rock State Park is an old volcano that bubbled up into an ancient lake, and then half the wall eroded, leaving a semi-circular boundary in the middle of a huge plain. Cool to walk around in, look at all the variations in rocks.

That evening we headed up to Bend. Took a look around Bend, decided to head over to Eugene the next morning. The trek over to Eugene had about quarter mile visibility the whole way, the scenic route was already closed for the winter, so we had to content ourselves with waterfalls right along the trail. As previously mentioned, we puttered around Eugene for a bit, decided that wasn't working for us, and drove south, explored the covered bridges of Lane county (separate update coming for that), and then stopped in Roseburg.