Honeymoon, Day 2: High Desert Museum

On our way from Prairie Campground to the third campground on our honeymoon itinerary, Wildcat, we stopped at the High Desert Museum 7.5 miles south of Bend. A huge sign north of La Pine announced its presence, and both Sarah and I were interested in checking it out.

We took the road off Highway 97 leading to the High Desert Museum to be greeted by the sight of a huge teepee. Following the road further, a large wagon came into view. It turns out, according to the sign, that this wagon is the last one to travel the Oregon Trail. Roy J. Brabham created a replica of a wagon in 1959 and used it to follow the same path that his ancestors took to come to Oregon.

Outside the museum, there was wildlife aplenty—from chipmunks begging for food to fish swimming the creek leading into the wildlife preserves within the museum itself. In addition, several sculptures of wildlife adorn the paths leading to the entrance of the museum from the parking lot.

The price for the museum was quite spendy—$15 a piece—but the ticket price lasts all day. The man at the front desk told us all we had to do was show our receipt to prove we’d already paid.

So we paid the $30 to get in, although we didn’t have much time to visit the entire museum. I stopped at the Birds of Prey wing of the museum, where I saw my first ever bald eagle. In addition, I watched a presentation given by one of the employees of the High Desert Museum about one of its inhabitants—a Great

Horned Owl. I was not able to retain much of the information shared in the presentation, as I spent most of my time trying to get a decent shot of the owl.

Sarah and I checked out other parts of the museum together. We passed by a sleeping bobcat and a lynx. The lynx’s story was sad. He had been found in the wild

declawed with his canine
teeth removed. They believe that someone had taken him in as a pet, and then got bored with him and left him in the wild to die. Fortunately, the High Desert Museum adopted him or that would have been his fate, being unable to defend himself.

Finally we visited the Spirit of the West wing of the museum. They displayed all sorts of old artifacts from the Old West—from Native American to settlers, gold mines to frontier towns. They also had a volcano exhibit, detailing a ton of information about volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, we were not able to take in all the sights we wanted—we had a long drive to Wildcat and needed to stop in Bend to restock on supplies. However, we definitely want to go back again someday soon.

Honeymoon, Day 2: Prairie Campground and Newberry National Volcanic Monument

We had planned to stay at East Lake Campground in Newberry National Volcanic Monument for the second and third nights of our honeymoon. However, when we arrived there we discovered that Newberry was covered in three feet of snow, and the campgrounds were closed. Fortunately, we had chosen an alternate destination for our stay: Prairie Campground—just down the road from Newberry National Volcanic Monument. We decided to stay there for only one night and the head out to our next destination and stay an extra night.

Prairie Campground was pretty ordinary with few sights. A creek ran through just south of the campground and across the highway over to its neighbor campground Ogden—a group campground I used to frequent growing up with my family. My grandfather used to work for US West (now Qwest and soon to be Century Link) and they sponsored a group camping event for current and former employees called Pioneering in the Pines. (It’s been a great many years since I’ve attended these events, and from my understanding, they’ve moved the event to a new location.) The only picture I have of Prairie I took was of our campsite as we were about to leave.

As for amenities, I was not very impressed. They provided water that was within easy access of our campsite. However, while I was there, I found no place to dispose of wastewater. (I ended up dumping it into the pit toilet.) In addition, the toilet seats in the pit toilets were made of metal, and they were cold!

We set up camp as soon as we arrived, and as we started to get ready to prepare diner, we realized that we has forgotten to pack a skillet to cook our steaks in! Luckily for us, La Pine was a short drive away. We stopped at Ray’s grocery store, but they did not have a skillet to sell. However, the lady at the deli counter was a saint and recommended Shop Smart to us. We managed to find a skillet there—for a ridiculous price—that saved us from having to drive all the way to Bend.

After we cooked dinner on a propane stove we borrowed from my mother, we decided to make a fire for warmth and roasting marshmallows. However the fire gods were not with us that day and starting our fire turned out to be quite a chore. After several attempts to start one, we finally managed to get enough fire to roast a few marshmallows for s’mores.

Prairie was much colder than Blue Pool! Fortunately, I had learned my lesson from the night before, and wore my sweatshirt. Plus, Sarah and I slept under three blankets, which made it quite cozy until we woke in the morning—at around 5 or 6 am. We were too cold to build a fire to make breakfast, so we both decided to just head into La Pine for McDonalds. Afterwards we stopped at Gordy’s Truck Stop to take showers. We had stopped at the truck stop the previous night for dinner. It was delicious! The showers were awesome, too, and pretty affordable at $8 a piece.

We returned to Prairie to pack up camp, and head to Newberry for some sights before moving on to Bend. Newberry National Volcanic Monument is a park inside the caldera of a volcano. There are two lakes there—Paulina and East Lakes—with a total

of nine boat launches between them. Fishing is allowed and you can catch two kinds of trout—brown and rainbow—as well as two kinds of salmon—kokanee and Atlantic. There are five campgrounds: Cinder Hill, East Lake, Hot Springs, Little Crater, and Pauline Lake—in addition to the resort at Pauline Lake. In addition there are numerous hiking trails leading all over the caldera giving you plenty to explore.

Since there was snow covering most of the mountain, the only open road led to Paulina Lake Resort—which has access to Paulina Lake itself. We spotted several boats on the lake, including a persistent fisherman and his dog. It was so cold that portions of the lake were even frozen. Even though we didn’t get to see many of the sites, we definitely plan to give Newberry another visit!