We all went to the Lava Butte area of Newberry National Volcanic Monument today. The first thing we did was hike the long Lava River Cave and get the info for Lava River Cave Earthcache (12:54 PM). The girls did real good, although Cortnie got cold and wanted to turn back. I gave her my light jacket, so I made more than half the hike in a t-shirt (it was about 40 degrees in the cave).
Next, we went across the street and got Lava Butte Breach Earthcache (2:10 PM). This involved a hike out across a lava flow and it was pretty warm. When we finished this hike, Mark and Annmarie took the girls back to the house (Karen went with them) and Dan, Janet, and I hurried up to the top of Lava Butte (we had a 30 minute window, and only about 20 minutes were left) to get Lava Butte Summit Earthcache (2:41 PM). We hike the summit loop trail and gathered the necessary information.
We then began navigating the dirt roads on the east side of hiway 97 and picked up Frozen Fire (3:02 PM) which required a little hike to get to. We had to hunt around for a while on the next one, This will “Crack” you up (3:24 PM). This is in the immediate vicinity of a deep lava crack. We didn’t take the time to go into the crack.
Next we took a .3 mile hike to Skwirl Hunt (3:52 PM) that involved finding a way across a wide lava crack. Also bushwhacked through a bunch of scratchy manzanita, but the cache was easy to spot.
On the way back into town, we stopped to hunt L.S.U.-Cheap Seats (4:40 PM) which Karen and I hadn’t been able to spot last year.
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