Saturday's touring

When we drove out to Lava Lands on Thursday, we noticed vehicles waiting for entry to the Lava River Cave - Carl asked about it at Lava Lands, and the ranger indicated that the problem is lack of parking, so when the parking lot fills, the rangers close the gates until some people leave. He suggested that if we got there just before they opened at 9am we would be sure to get in and visit the cave with minimal wait. We decided to do that on Saturday.

Our visit started with a lecture by one of the rangers on the dangers to the bats of White Nose Syndrome.

This disease is caused by a cold-loving fungus that thrives in bat hibernation sites such as caves and mines. It is spread through bat-to-bat contact and by humans who bring clothing, shoes or gear from a contaminated site to another location. It is extremely fatal for bats, but poses no known health risks to humans.

The ranger explained that the normal bat behavior is to lower their body temperature to that of the cave and hibernate all winter, living on food stores in their body. The White Nose Syndrome causes them to itch, which wakes them up during their hibernation, and causes them to expend energy (calories) that would have allowed them to live through the winter, thus causing death.

They asked us to ensure that we were not wearing clothing, shoes, or using equipment that we had taken into any other cave.

Cautions about entering... we had prepared by wearing jeans and jackets (even though it was predicted to be 80+ for the high that day!).

How the lava tubes are formed

The entry to the cave - stairway down...

Heading into the cave...

... and further down...

And that's gonna be about all the pictures we can take, cuz it's *dark* in there!

Carl was able to put his phone camera on "night sight" and hold it very still -- the flashlights that we are all using lit up the cave enough to make it look like there was wired lighting in there (there was not!).

The cave ends about 1 mile in - the ceiling gets lower and lower. I think we heard that some explorers tried digging deeper into the cave, and got 300' in, digging in the sand (ash), but still did not come to an opening.

Some more pictures to give you an idea of the cave and the view with other people and flashlights.

Lots of spots of light

When we first were in the cave, we were with lots of other people (all the early arrivals). They soon passed us by as we were walking more slowly and trying to see more. Then the next group (the ones who got the lecture after us) overtook us. By the time we got to the end, most folks had come in and were on their way out, so we had a quieter (and darker) walk out. (New groups could not come in until room was made in the parking lot by earlier groups leaving.) A couple of times, we turned off our flashlights and experienced the darkness. The ranger had told us that we should hold onto something as it is easy to lose your balance when your eyes are not seeing anything. In our case, there were folks around a bend in front and behind us, so we could still see a little light, so it wasn't total darkness, but it was pretty dark!

Looking up at a part of the roof of the cave.

They told us that bats were in the cave, but we did not see any.

Returning to the entrance...

... it was great to see sunlight!

From there, we drove into Bend to the Northwest Crossing Saturday Farmer's Market...

... it was quite large...

... we were looking for fresh vegetables, and there were a few vendors with veggies, though by the time we arrived (about 2 hours after opening, 2 hours before closing), they were selling out of some items.

There were a few entertainers amongst the vendors.

You may be able to barely distinguish a snow-capped peak at the end of the street.

The market covered about 4 blocks - pretty large in our experience. It is always interesting to see what is being sold at the market. At this one, in addition to fresh vegetables, there were clothing and jewelry and art vendors. Something that we have not seen before was that there were vendors selling CBD products and alcohol (both wine and, it appeared, canned mixed drinks with hard liquor). We were glad to get some Swiss chard, snow peas and broccoli.