The personal and professional website of Douglas Van Bossuyt
We stopped by the Lava Butte Cinder Cone to check out the fire lookout on our way to Newberry Crater for our birthday weekend. It’s been several years since we were up here and the view is as good as ever.
The fire lookout was occupied upstairs with the Forest Service lookout but downstairs we were able to check everything out and get some interpretation with another employee who pointed out some cool features of the surrounding mountains.
We have our faithful Albino Rhino on this trip!
It’s pretty amazing where they bulldozed roads in around Newberry Crater. Even across these lava fields.
Keep on trucking across the fields of lava!
Some of the roads we tried going down were closed due to fallen trees. Much of this area doesn’t see traffic very often.
As it started getting later in the day, we found a nice little campsite off of a side road that was off of another side road in the middle of the lava fields.
Heather with the truck right before we started to setup our camp for the night.
We headed on up to the top of Mount Hebo to visit the former site of one of the radar stations for the old early warning system to detect Soviet bombers heading for the mainland of America.
The view from the top is great. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to have a major radar installation up here 40 years ago.
On the road back to the Willamette Valley.
These stands of second or third growth trees are a little creepy with how uniform they are.
There are lots of little cool trails out here.
Big ferns here.
The ridge that runs east from Mount Hebo is really pretty.
We sure do love our little truck! It takes us on lots of adventures.
