Donaldson Crew Adventures

Weather was cool and overcast this weekend, so Sunday afternoon when Kelly took Abbie to her dance class, I took the boys out to one of the local caves we have not been to. Hunter and Noah have been to a number of them, a few before we started the blog when we first moved to Bend (Arnold Cave, Hidden forest cave), and some since the blog has started. (Boca cave on triangulation peak, South Ice Cave, and Skylight Cave).  This, however would be PJ's first cave where he went in!   He loved it and wants to go again.

We decided to hit a cave called Pictograph Cave.  It was about a 20 min drive from our house south east, and then about a 1.5 mile hike with some cross country exploration required to find the un-marked hole in the ground where the entrance started.

There are actually two caves at the entrance - left and right.  Since all caves around here are basically old lava tubes the entrance is simply where a part of the roof caved in to expose the tunnel.  Based on my reading the 'right' entrance was a little less steep but still a challenge none the less.  There was also a family of falcons on the rocks at the entrance and they were not super happy we were there.  Also a possible set of pictographs as seen in the second photo.

Iphone's don't take great low light shots but here is a series of pictures from inside the cave.  The last picture gives you a scale of the entrance size/depth.  See Hunter and Noah hear the top of the entrance as we exited.

We have not been to Sisters in a while so with a nice spring day in front of us, we headed over there in the morning.  I wanted to find this lava tube cave just out of Sisters back in on some fire roads.  It turned out to be a little harder than expected to find it.  After about 4 missed turns we finally found it.  While trying to find it however we drove on some beatiful back country roads.  The picture you see above is Hunter Noah and Abbie with Mt Washington in the backdrop.  

This cave has some skylights in it a ways back in that give you some interesting light beams.  Due to my bad navigation we were a little later getting there than I wanted so there was only a partial beam coming through one of the skylights but the kids still thought it was way cool.  Once back on the surface we hunted along the ground until we could find the holes from the top.   After the cave we headed back into Sisters, had a picnic lunch there, grabbed a coffee at Sisters Coffee house and headed back home mid afternoon.

Today we did a family car outing.  Our first destination was cave called 'South Ice Cave' where May is supposed to be the prime month to go.  Snow has melted off the roads, but still cold enough in the cave where there is frozen water on the floor and icicles from the ceiling.