jinian | Trip report, part five

I suspected that people were coming up behind them, and I wanted to let them have some time at the end, so I headed back out. People were much more inclined to talk to me when I was outward bound. I was extremely happy and didn't mind. The funny ones were the woman who asked trepidatiously, "Does it get really low?" and her husband saying heartily, "So, does it widen out again later on?"

Talking to the kids right out at the entrance was fun, too. "A mile?" I tried to play up how fun it was and how you got to crawl at the end, and they seemed more enthusiastic. Other kids wanted a little reassurance that I hadn't seen any bears, bats, or cougars, which their dad had been telling them were in the cave.

So I came out of the cave, turned off my lantern, took it back, and was rewarded by a newspaper about the volcanic charms of the area. I got back to the truck and discovered that the mobile phone had been called four times. Well, there isn't cellular service deep within the earth, okay? I wasn't going to take it with me so it could ring and echo for a mile, anyway. Mom called again and noted that it had been two hours since I'd left (which means I made good time for climbing around in caves, Mom!), so I headed back to get the family, with only a brief stop to photograph the "BI-MART" billboard.

Cousin #5 had sat on a dead baby bird. It wasn't messy, but they were all dithering. I picked it up, found it quite cold (she'd been worried she'd killed it), and put it in the dumpster despite the more sentimental ideas advanced by my family members. When you pick up the dead baby bird, you can try to toss it onto the roof so its mom can say goodbye to it or put it in the crook of a tree limb as an "Indian burial ground". (My, I am curmudgeonly tonight.)

So we drove. Several miles out of Bend, I looked up from the newspaper they'd given me about the volcanic parks and started laughing. Perhaps you recall the lava flow forest where we couldn't park after driving miles and miles because we didn't have a pass? I quote:

Northwest FOrest Pass Free Days
There are three designated "free days" in 2001 when a Northwest Forest Pass is not required on the Ochoco and Deschutes National Forests. These Free Days are:
June 2 - Free Fishing and National Trails Day
June 30 - Newberry National Volcanic Monument 10th Anniversary
August 9 - Smokey Bear's Birthday

Okay, now apart from the obvious dorkiness of Smokey Bear's Birthday... We were there on June 30. I laughed for at least two miles. Mom was pissed. :)

At one point in northern central Oregon, one can see four different volcanic cones. There's some Stonehenge re-creation above the Columbia, which was kind of neat to see. Nothing else really happened on the way home. I came home and got my Wim and my cats and all was well. And the trip report is finally bloody over.