Last few days in Oregon...

Monday June 14, Bill got to talking to our RV neighbor Karen Martin. She started saying how her son Jim was in the Coast Guard also and Bill realized he had worked with him here in Oregon and actually was trying to figure out how to get in touch with him. She told him he had died 16 years ago at the age of thirty-four and he could not believe it. They talked for quite a while and she was so happy to meet someone who had worked with him as his death had been very hard on them and took them a long time to heal from it.

Tuesday June 15 we went back to Lava Beds National Monument. We first walked 1.5 miles round trip up to the top of Schonchin Butte to see the view of the area which there was an awesome view of Mount Shasta.  We spotted this Bald Eagle flying over us as we walked up the Butte.  

 We then went into three of the caves by ourselves. The first one was Golden Dome; it was very eerie being in there with no lights except our headlamps. At first I didn’t like it too much but I got used to it. We had to practically crawl in several spots so as not to hit our heads or touch the bacteria all over the place. It looked like gold specs and was really neat looking with our lights reflecting on it.

The next cave was called Sunshine as it had several open spots where the rock had collapsed.  We had to climb on our hands in a few spots in this one but you could see a lot better.

The third one was the Skull Caves where skull bones were found down by the Ice Caves.   It was a huge cave that you walked down to get to where the Ice had formed due to the rain in the winter. 

Many of the caves were closed due to the bats hibernating in them. We then walked over another 1.75 miles to two open caves where the Petroglyphs were. We had to climb down to see them into the collapsed caves but it was really cool to see them and try and figure out what they meant.

We got back to the campground where there were 3 more RV’s there dry camping. We were there a total of 10 days and the five sites where never all occupied so we were kind of surprised. Our neighbors to the right were from Hawaii and were planning on going to see Crater Lake so we told them we were leaving the next day and they could have our spot. Karen and her husband came over so he could meet Bill and talk more about Jim. It was getting really cold so we went in the RV for the evening after exchanging email and phone numbers with the Martins. That night it got down to 35 degrees, coldest in the 10 days we had been there.  As we left the next morning our Hawaiian neighbor gave us some Macadamia Chocolates for telling them we were leaving and they could have our spot.