Parents Visit

My parents came out to visit last week for 5 days or so. They had never been to Oregon before, and Mark and I hadn't gotten to do much of the touristy stuff around the Bend area yet, so we had a great time showing them around, trying out the local restaurants, and seeing the sights. It was a bit overcast with rain forcasted for just about every day, but luckily the rain held off and didn't hinder our days at all.

Jess and the parents at Benham Falls. The falls here is more of a long cascade...nothing too dramatic, but still pretty. And we could hike up to this viewpoint to get a head-on view of the falls.

We walked a lot this day...along with hiking to Benham Falls, we also walked a mile back into the Lava River Cave - a lava tube that is quite big, but gets pretty small toward the end. This is my dad about as close to the end as we got. We weren't up for crawling.

We also walked around the Newberry Crater Monument. There were some shorter trails that wound through the lava fields, which were pretty cool. We also drove up to the top of Lava Butte (behind us), which gave a great view of the surrounding area and the mts.

If you look closely to the top of the cliff, you'll see, mom, dad, and Jess overlooking Benham Falls.

We made our way over to Tumalo Falls one day as well. Mark and I hadn't ever taken the makeshift trail over to the bottom of the falls, so it was cool to get that close.

Mom and Dad up at Bachelor standing on snow in warm weather. This doesn't happen in WI! :)

We spent one afternoon canoeing at Elk Lake for a couple of hours. We got a pretty good tour of most of the lake, and pretty good views of South Sister and Mt. Bachelor as well!

Mom and Mark canoeing with Bachelor in the background.

Devil's Lake is just off the highway back toward Elk Lake. It's hard to tell even in this picture, but parts of it are an incredible shade of green.

We had such a great time, and my parents were excited to do some things they don't get to do in the midwest (lava caves!). Maybe next time we can coerce them into white water rafting ;).