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| Subway Lava Tube Cave |
Just outside Lassen on our way to Crater Lake we popped over to see Subway Lava Tube Cave, then continued east to I-5 then north towards Oregon (one of my favorite drives in California is up this valley and over the pass into Oregon). Of course in keeping with our volcano theme we stopped to take pictures of Mt. Shasta, a 14,000 behemoth of a volcano north of Redding where the Cascades end and the central valley of California begins. You can see it from far, far away south and east since it towers 7,000 feet above the neighboring mountains.
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| Mount Shasta |
We stopped in Ashland, Oregon (south of Medford) just across the pass from California in a dry valley between the Coastal Range and the Cascades. Ashland is a fun town to visit for the food, scenery, and the Shakespeare festival. We stayed for dinner at a Hawaiian fusion restaurant, then headed up the lower slopes of the Cascades towards Crater Lake.
Ann couldn't get a reservation in the historic lodge on the rim, but found a nice historic inn at the edge of the park in tiny Prospect, Oregon where folks including Teddy Roosevelt and Jack London had stayed back when it was a two day stage ride from the trains at Medford to Crater Lake. It was the lushest environment we'd seen since leaving Michigan, having stayed almost exclusively on the dry side of the mountains before this point. It had many recognizable plants like thimbleberries mixed with many unrecognized native to the Northwest. We hiked in the morning to the nearby Rogue River to see the rapids on the edge of town, then back for a fine breakfast at the inn.
Then up the mountain. On the way, we stopped at yet another lava tube feature, a box canyon on a branch of the Rogue River formed in a collapsed lava tube. You could even see the remains of branching filled and collapsed tubes in the walls of the canyon. Again it was a wet winter here, and the water was roaring, high and fast.
https://picasaweb.google.com/jbp1111/SubwayCaveLavaTubeJul2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCKb5xfOn8tqbcg
https://picasaweb.google.com/jbp1111/ProspectOrJul2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCKTa-f-3ybap0AE
Ann couldn't get a reservation in the historic lodge on the rim, but found a nice historic inn at the edge of the park in tiny Prospect, Oregon where folks including Teddy Roosevelt and Jack London had stayed back when it was a two day stage ride from the trains at Medford to Crater Lake. It was the lushest environment we'd seen since leaving Michigan, having stayed almost exclusively on the dry side of the mountains before this point. It had many recognizable plants like thimbleberries mixed with many unrecognized native to the Northwest. We hiked in the morning to the nearby Rogue River to see the rapids on the edge of town, then back for a fine breakfast at the inn.
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