I’m beat.

July 28, 2003

Man, today sure was a long day, even though I didn’t really DO anything. We turned out to get a little more screwed by the hotel we stayed at than we originally thought–the continental breakfast (of which I got one or two on the road with my Dad) ended at 9 AM. 9 AM? What the heck? Who ends breakfast at 9 AM? Heather and I checked out at 9:45, but of course, all that was left was coffee. What a crappy deal. It’s only money, I guess, and you live, you learn. Guess I won’t be staying at another Comfort Inn anytime soon.

We went from there and turned South to the lava river tube. One mile long, 50 feet underground or so. We forgot to bring floashlights to take along the length of the cave, so we bought a couple of $2 flashlights at Safeway last night (the batteries cost more than the flashlights put together!), but we were a little afriad that they would give out or break, so we rented a lantern before we went in, too. That turned out to be good, because while the flashlights lasted and didn’t break, they sure didn’t kick out a lot of light, and the lantern sure made things better. Last time I was at the lava cave I was in 5th grade, and I remember it being a bit bigger, especially towards the end where you basically have to crawl. I bet Heather she couldn’t touch the end of the cave, but she came pretty close. I did it in the 5th grade, but I wasn’t in the mood to crawl through the sand this time, especfially in shorts. I wore shorts, even though it’s a nice toasty 42 degrees throughout the entire cave. Smart, huh?

After the lava cave, we were going to go straight to the lava cast forest, but instead we went and got some lunch in Sunriver and then took a side trip to go up the the Newberry volcano, where we drove up to the top of Paulina peak. Let me tell you, that’s a hell of a drive up to the peak. It’s about 5 or 6 miles up a twisty, rugged, bumpy road, although the view on top is fantatstic. I took a bunch of pictures, of course. From the top we could see the huge obsidian flow down below, and so we checked that out, of course.

THEN we finally went back up Highway 97 to go to the lava cast forest, a really neat lava flow that surrounded a forest of trees, and in many cases, left impressions of the trunks. Not just patterns on the rocks, but huge hollow holes in the ground where the trees were. Neat stuff. By this time, though, we were both dead. We’d been driving and walking all day, plus we were both really thirsty, and so we went back to Bend to go find a new hotel. I looked on Expedia last night and found a new place to go, but we just could NOT find the place. We drove all around the neighborhood in which I knew it was located (and even ended up headed out towards our hotel from last night on a wrong turn, of which I made many) but just couldn’t find the blasted place. We were so tired, though, that we finally just decided to go to a pretty sketchy-looking place on the road, but upon inquiring found that it was more expensive than our MIA hotel plus they didn’t even have a pool. As I was waiting to pull back onto the street, what did my tired little eyes notice across the street? A tiny little sign leading to a side street where out hotel was located. This new place isn’t as nice as the place last night, but it’s $30 less AND it has a pool (unlike the place across the street). It’s just fine, because we’re both so tired and man, I just want to go to sleep. It DOES have a fridge in the room, though, so I can keep my soda for tomorrow cold.

So I’m sorry that I’m glossing over some of the details from the trip, but I’m very tired. We’re watching “Happy Gilmore” on TV right now, but then I think I need to get some sack time, because we’re hiking tomorrow. And I definitely need to put sunscreen on this time. My neck got kind of red today. Night all.

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