Donaldson Crew Adventures

Kelly left for California today with her dad and the kids for the week.  I will fly down next weekend and drive back with them, however with no family today, I decided to go out for a hike today in the high cascades.  My destination was the Matthieu Lakes (North and South) via a 7 mile loop hike.  I departed from Dee Wright Observatory about 15 miles southwest of Sisters.  This starting point adds an extra mile each way from the standard trailhead but the views from the lava fields are great.  The weather was warm with a slight breeze, and a perfect day for a walk.  I brought Red with me to enjoy the lakes.  He love the swimming but is not in as good a shape as he was in his younger years.  He was suffering near the end and I had to carry him off and on the last 1/3 of a mile.  

View of North and Middle Sister at the start of the hike along with the snow barren Mt Washington while hiking along the lava fields.

The hike takes you up to around 6000 ft.  Here are some pictures along the highest point of the hike and South Matthieu lake that has North Sister poking up in the background.

After enjoying the sun at South Mattieu Lake, we headed down hill to the slighly bigger North Mathieu Lake.   Red got out and did more swimming at this one. 

From here it was back to the car for a cold beer waiting on ice.  

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.