Day Out Amongst the Volcanoes

Thursday
Today is the first of May! Big Deal, no it really is a big deal round here. It may be the beginning of May with sunny skies and temperatures in the 80's, but up high in the Cascades it is still mid winter. With the amount of snow they get here they just don't bother clearing the roads. This week we have been wanting to travel the Scenic Highways and visit some cool volcanoes, but they have been closed. Today some of them open. The Lava Butte being the most important one. So we packed a lunch and went together to the Lava Butte, a 500ft high cinder cone, red lava. Nice cone shape, with a neat depression in the top, just like you imagine a volcano to be. Best of all a road winds round the outside, so you can take the car up to see the view (dejavu?, yes just like Pilot View Butte, which we visited yesterday, but it is different). So we went up and were rewarded with a fabulous view of the surrounding mountains. If we looked to the south we could see Mt Shasta, if we looked to the north we could see Mount Hood. Those two mountains are 297 miles apart, that is like standing in London and being able to see Leicester to the north and Paris to the south!

 We then managed to climb a little way up into the mountains, before coming to a dead stop with a 'Road Closed' sign. Still we did see a very pretty frozen lake  - Elk Lake.
On the way we found a neat picnic spot by Prairie Crane Lake, where we watched a Garter Snake swim up to the shore and slither up the beach. They apparently are not poisonous and are quite small, as the pic with my lens cap in in shows. Then while eating lunch we saw an Osprey, then a Bald Eagle. Then watched as the Osprey attacked the Bald Eagle  in the air! Again I have pics, but as the whole thing happened abut 1/4 mile away the quality is not that good.

Still in all a great day out with Roy and Anne, who are now reunited with their Dodge Ram Pickup and tomorrow we move on north. But that is another day and another tale.