Newberry National Volcanic Monument

We spent a pleasant day exploring the Newberry National Volcanic Monument beginning with a drive up Lava Butte, another extinct volcano. We hiked a trail around the top of the cinder cone. Next we visited the 7984 ft. Paulina Peak where we gazed down into the giant Newberry Volcano Caldera which contained two lakes. We could see the giant obsidian lava flow which we visited later in the day. We learned more about the volcano geology from a ranger talk at the peak and then did a short hike. We then descended the rough steep gravel road back to the valley where we visited the shore of East Lake. From there we visited the obsidian flow, a huge mass of lava containing some black glass obsidian. We climbed the stairs and path to walk around on the lava flow. It was quite amazing to see the remains of this volcanic activity from 7000 years ago. We feel that the volcanic geology that we saw in Oregon surpassed that of Hawaii. Click HERE to see more pictures.