Lava Cast Forest

We went to visit MIL yesterday, but first we stopped at the Lava Cast Forest, just down the road from her place.

We turned off Hwy 97 and before we knew it we were on the 9 mile gravel road to the Lava Cast Forest site.  The road wasn't too bad, just a little rough in some spots, and then we found the parking lot.  It was a nice wooded area with parking for cars and buses.  This remote area even had a nice bathroom.  There were flyers to take with you to explain what you were seeing while you were on the one mile path. 

My one complaint is that many of these type of areas are "fee areas" where it costs $5 to park.  Maybe this is a petty complaint on my part but I feel like we are paying so much through our property taxes and especially income taxes that I think it should be that cars with Oregon license plates should be exempt from these fees.  That's my opinion and now on with my story...

Of course, since we like to do things backwards we didn't notice the flyers until after our walk was done.  We figured out there must have been something when we saw numbered markers along the way.

Our son moved back in with us last week and here are Father and Son.

One of the many holes that dotted the area.  These are formed when the lava flowed around the tree and cooled and the tree burned.  The lava cooled and the burning tree was not hot enough to reliquify the lava, leaving behind the hole where the tree used to be.

I took so many pictures of these tree holes.  It reminded me of so many years ago when we were at Yellowstone Park and I took a million and one pictures of the bubbling mud holes and hot water holes.  And that was long before I had a digital camera!

The ragged landscape.  Good thing there was a nice path otherwise this would have been impossible to walk around.

Looking through a fallen tree lava cast.

This is the fallen log from the above photo.

And finally a Mother and Son photo.