Bend, Oregon - Cascades

I consulted my wise and generous hosts when planning my day's adventure in Bend, Oregon. The National Geographic Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways recommended four scenic drives in the vicinity. With guidance from Marc and Lisa I chose the Cascade Lakes Highway. The book's description seemed promising: "Weaving through a classic Cascades landscape, the highway passes massive volcanoes, murmuring streams, forest of awesome evergreens, lava flows, glittering lakes, and meadows full of wildflowers." In fact the description turned out to be rather inadequate to the task.

Bend looks like a ski town (which it is). There are low, scrubby trees in the town, tall pines on the hills, and massive, snow brushed mountains all around. The scenic drive actually starts in Bend, and quite right too. Stand anywhere in town and turn a slow 360 degrees and you will see the peaks of the Cascades looming on every side.



Driving into Deschutes National Forest you are surrounded on all sides by ponderosa pine forest, hemlock, fir and spruce. Then you round a corner and there is Mount Bachelor suddenly ahead.

In Winter Mount Bachelor is a skier's paradise. Even in summer it dominates the landscape from almost everywhere in the park.

Australia is an ancient, flat and stable continent eroded away in many places to bare rock. You don't see a lot of this kind of volcanic rock lying around the parks. This is the remains of a lava flow. The molten rock cracks as it cools and solidifies, leaving distinctive smooth, fluid planes on the stone.

Australia has it's own ways of showing off, like having a gigantic lump of rock sitting in the middle of the continent, but we could take some lessons from Bend, Oregon.