One of our favorite hikes in the Bend area is the trail to Green Lakes at the base of South Sister. We hiked in about a mile until the snow began to get pretty rough to walk on and then decided we’d try something else.
That something else was a series of caches in the Sparks Lake area. But first, we looked for Central Oregon Art Gallery. This is an interesting area of big lava boulders with some pictographs, which we never did see, and lots of graffiti, which we did see. The obvious way down into this little meadow was on a steep, slick, icy snow field, so we found another way. My GPS, or the coordinates, were a little off, and I wasn’t finding anything. Couldn’t even find the hints. Karen finally walked around the rocks a bit and found the hint. I made a quick find after that at 12:41 PM.
HD Cachefinder is just off of Cascade Lakes Highway and easy to get to, but we didn’t find it easy to find. It’s hidden in a pile of rocks, with nothing to distinguish it. To me, it’s like an ivy hide. I found it because my boot hit a rock that hit the ammo can and it thunked. Found at 1:21 PM.
I’ve always bypassed hiking around Sparks Lake because the south end near the Green Lakes trailhead looks so marshy. We were pleasantly surprised in the hike for the next couple of caches (surprised by the mosquitoes too). In an area of collapsed lava tubes and jumbles of lava rock we found Western Exposure at 2:24 PM.
We carefully bush-whacked it over to Davis Canyon Surprise, which we found at 2:43 PM. This was near the lake shore, and the mosquitoes were thick.
After dinner in Bend I found By The Bridge at 7:04 PM. The wind was really whipping, maybe from micro-bursts from the thunderheads that were around. I walked across a dirt field to find this one and got sand in my eyes.
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