Lava Lands Visitor Center


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TRAVEL ITENERARY
May 2nd Green River, UT at KOA Campground x4 nights (159m)
May 6th Heber, UT Mountain Valley RVR (2 lay-overs) x7n (234m)
May 16th Bend, OR TT (Overnights and stays TBD) (654m)(x7n)
June 5th Whaler’s Rest in Newport, OR.
June 26th Pacific City, OR @ Cloverdale RVP (T3 x14n)
July 16th Portland, OR @ Columbia River RVP (PPx2n)
July 18th Welch’s, OR @ Mt Hood (T3 x12n)
Time to travel East

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5.28.19-Tuesday-Lava Land and Lava River Cave
Finally no rain, a beautiful day around 65 degrees. We leave the coach about 9:30 and were on our way to Lava Land. It was both educational and informative. Take time to read the blog on Lava Land. We enjoyed a great visit to Lava Land and got are cardio workout by walking possibly about 3 miles.

When we arrived and I saw this mound of lava residue, I was awed at the idea of being so close to a volcano. Wrong! This was not a volcano, this was one of over 400 “vents” that were created some 10,000 years ago, more or less by the Newberry Volcano some, believe it or not, twenty-five miles from here. This entire area makes up the Newberry Northwest  Rift Zone.

This entire area within the 25 mile range of the Newberry Volcano became very active about sever-thousand years ago. Vents were created by this volcano for the purpose of releasing gases, steam and lave from below the earth. This particular vent here in Sunriver, OR is about five-hundred feet in height. When it was first formed it was pointy (a lava dome) but after many active years the top of the vent caved in as you can see in the picture above.


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The Newberry Volcano is not actually  visible in the picture above but if you can locate the TWO patches of snow and/ice Newberry is in the center of these two patches of white. Once again it’s over thirty miles from here. The Newberry Volcano is Oregon’s largest volcano and hopefully we’ll have close-up pictures of it in a few days when we visit it. Back 7000 years ago it’s lava flow and vents, as I mentioned earlier, extended as far out as forty miles, possibly as big as the state of Rhode Island, I’ve read. The creation of Newberry did not happen overnight. Over the course of 400,000 years through many eruptions, it continued growing taller and bigger.  Eventually, after the eruptions stopped some 7000 years ago the top of the volcano did collapse within itself forming a “Caldera.” This Caldera now covers over seventeen square miles and has two lakes which we hope to visit in the future. These lakes are Paulina Lake and East Lake. Below is a view from the top of this vent mound looking down. All that black stuff is volcanic ash from 7000 years ago.
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Above we decide to set out and walk the rim of the vent depression you saw in picture below. The depression at the top of this butte is 17 square miles and to walk around it is over a quarter mile in distance. The area is just to vast and big for a regular lens. Picture above is courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

This picture is about all you can capture with a 55 mm lens. The cavity in the center drops over 150 feet.

Above, once again, they are not volcanoes, just buttes or vents courtesy of the Newberry Volcano. For the most part they are all dormant except Newberry. It still exerts vents with steam coming from it and warm water lakes. Below is the view from the road of the volcanic rock/lava from Newberry from 7000 years ago. it looks as pristine as if it were only a few days old.
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In the picture above is a topographical rendering in the Visitors Center of Newberry Volcano with its two lakes, Paulina and East Lake. Carla has her finger on the spot that were currently at, Sunriver, some 30 plus miles away. All the green stuff in this picture is how the lava spread out those 7000 years ago and the area it covered. The thickness of the lava buildup goes from a few dozen feet to more the 500 feet in some locations.
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Mazama refers to “Crater Lake” from a previous blog the end of May. To the left is a refresher picture of Crater Lake. Crater Lake is a dormant volcano which is why the water in the lake is a constant 45 degrees.

 

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This is a volcanic rock from this area and the description is below.

Carla is talking to one of the rangers at the Visitors’ Center.
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