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Oregon's Newberry National Volcanic Monument
By Shelly Hemig
The Visitor Center provides information about the geology, archeology and wildlife of central Oregon through displays and pictures. When we visited, they had an interactive science display for children that included a bowl of water and several small lava rocks. We learned that obsidian sinks, while pumice floats. The Visitor Center is seasonally manned by rangers and docents from April to October.
From there, we backtracked about a mile to the Lava River Cave, which was also easily accessible from the highway. For a small fee, we were allowed to take an unguided tour of the lavatube, which was once a roofed-over segment of a lava river.
All we had with us were the kids' small flashlights. We were completely unprepared for a two-mile roundtrip walk underground, but that only made it seem more like an adventure. We rented a kerosene lantern for another nominal charge and walked down the concrete stairs into the mouth of the cave. The kids must have thought they had been swallowed whole. As soon as we got around the first turn and no more sunlight was making its way in to us, they wanted to leave. We convinced them to go a little further. We went in about a third of the way, then gave in to the kids' demands and came back out. A child's fear of the dark needs to be taken into account before heading into any cave.
