We made our way to Bend Oregon to visit some friends. That was the purpose of the trip. We just got back into the Cyclone and were ready to visit some friends after our trip to Alaska and share some wilderness stories and hear about their summer. We had a warm welcome as we pulled in, all of our friends were waiting for us, they had reserved us a spot for our RV right next to them and they had planned a potluck. We pulled in at dinner time, parked our RV and walked across the street to enjoy dinner with seven or eight other full time traveling families.
For over a week we got to spend time with our friends, catching up on stories around the campfire, kids having outdoor movie nights, floating the river and going to bingo. We succeeded on our purpose of catching up with friends.
We were so focused on re-connecting that we hadn’t put much thought into things to see around the area. After a few days we decided to go check out the area. We passed a lot of lava rock on our way in, so we invited some friends to go along. Harmony and the boys went on two short hikes.
The first was to Paulina Falls. We started at the visitor center and hiked about half a mile to the top of the falls. There was a parking area there also, so these falls are accessible without hiking at all. We are always up for hiking so we continued down to the bottom of the falls to check out the view. It was awesome, it looks like two large falls side by side. All the kids had a blast climbing on rocks at the bottom of the falls. We took some pictures and headed back up.
A short drive down the road led us to Big Obsidian. There we got to see huge mounds of rocks, pumice and obsidian. It was incredible to see so much obsidian in one place. It was an easy, short hike up to the top and gorgeous views of the area. The kids all enjoyed more rock climbing with their friends. Emmett had a hard time leaving some of the obsidian behind. He really wanted to take one little piece with him, which was against the rules. So we hopped back in the car while he was sobbing and headed home for dinner.
