07-01-13

John and I have been camping for a couple of days with no internet available. That is why it has been a couple of days since the last post.

John and I head for Paulina lake.

We left Samantha’s apartment around 9:00 and drove to the public RV dump station and dumped the black and grey tanks. There wasn’t any fresh water available there and I didn’t know where else to get fresh water for the tank so we returned to the apartment and filled up from the spigot in the front yard. In order for the hose to reach the fill up port on the RV we had to park facing the wrong way on the street. Even then I had to use both my water hoses and even then just had enough hose to make it.

Eventually we got on the road and headed south on 97 through Bend, OR and turned left on FR 21 to Newberry Crater and Paulina Lake.
I was a little concerned that there would be a lot of people already there but the campground was almost empty. We had no problem getting a spot large enough for Plan “B”. There were several long spots. We took one that was a pull through and were setup by 11:00.

The lake is at over 6,000 feet so it is a little cooler here than in Redmond.

After we set up we had lunch out on the picnic table in our site. Right away we noticed we had a problem as we were swarmed by mosquitoes. I realized that we had no bug repellant with us.
Bummer!!

We decides to take a ride further up the road in the jeep to look at the other campgrounds around the two lakes, Paulina and East Lake. The main campground around East Lake was much fuller than the Paulina Lake campground although it also had several spots that were large enough for a 30 foot RV to fit into.

At the end of FR21 on the shore of East Lake is Cinder Hill campground but all the sights we saw there were to small for a large RV.

We stopped at a day use area on East Lake so I could get a couple of pictures.

I think that is Newberry Crater behind John.
Here is another interesting mountain in the background, I don’t know the name of it but maybe after being here a couple more days I will find out.

Both these lakes we formed after a volcano erupted and rain water and snow melt filled in the caldera. There are still hot springs in parts of the lakes.

After visiting the two lakes I decided that we had to do something about the bug situation. We drove down off the mountain to highway 97 and drove south to the town of La Pine where we went to the local market and bought some bug repellant. I had been told by several people that Bounce dryer sheets worked good for repelling mosquitoes so I picked up a pox. I don’t like the smell of them but I figured that if they worked to keep away mosquitoes it might be worth a try. Just to be on the safe side I also bought some “OFF Towelettes”.

I was told that all you have to do with the Bounce sheets is place them around where you will be sitting or eating and the Mosquitoes would stay away.
When we got back to the RV, I took the bag chairs out of the jeep and set them up in the shade, then with a cloths pin I attached the sheet to the back of the chairs. We sat down in the chairs for a little relaxation and immediately were attacked by hungry mosquitoes. I got out the “Off Towellettes”, we rubbed them on our bare skin and the mosquitoes went away.
I guess the Bounce works as long as you have a back up. :O) John went swimming later in the afternoon. He reported that the water was freezing cold.

We had left over rib’s and corn for dinner.

Tomorrow (07-02) I am thinking of taking a road that goes into Newberry Crater and maybe we can find a road to that interesting mountain. It may be called Paulina Peak.
That won’t take up the whole day so maybe we can find some other roads to check out. A lot of the roads around here are restricted so we will just have to see how it works out.

O7-02-13

John fell asleep around 6:00 last night right after dinner.
I went to bed around 10:00 and as it was a cool night I got the best sleep I have had in a while. I got out of bed around 7:00. John was still copping zees so I let him sleep. I was wondering how long he could sleep.
By 10:30 I got bored and woke him up. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone sleep for that long, something like 16 hours straight.

Around 11:00 we took of for a ride.
The first place I wanted to checkout was the Newberry Volcano. We drove east for a couple miles and found the road that goes up to the crater. The road was a little rutted and climbed the side of the mountain. Eventually we entered the south side of the crater. Unfortunately the road petered out not far into the bowl and became a bike trail.
We stopped for a picture.

Much of the rock is obsidian.

After taking the pictures we headed back down to the pavement and turned right. We followed the highway until we came to a side road with a sign that read Big Lava Flow. The road ended at a trailhead.
Back to the highway we went. We turned west and drove until we came to the road that went up to Paulina Peak. We turned onto the road and climbed the the mountain. The road started out paved but changed to gravel with a lot of real deep washboard.

Eventually we got to the lookout at the top of Paulina Peak and
took some more pictures.

Behind John you can see Paulina Lake, Newberry Volcano and East Lake.

You can see the Three Sisters in the background.

 

After getting back to the highway we turned east and followed the road to until we got to road 2127 where we turned west and followed this road to road 2125. We turned onto this road and followed it for a while until we got to Road 2121. There is supposed to be some ice caves somewhere on this road but we never found them. Road 2121 took us back to the highway and we returned to the campground.

We will be leaving here tomorrow and going back to Redmond. We had a nice relaxing time here and enjoyed the cooler temperatures.

07-03-13

John and I left Paulina Lake around 10:00 this morning and were back in Redmond by 11:15.
It was a fun trip and we had a good time.