Road Trip – Omaha to Seattle – Day 18 – Bend, OR – Boise, ID – September 28, 2010

Woke up early when the sun poured in the window, brushed my teeth in the parking lot and went into Wal-Mart to buy a few things and some breakfast. Headed back the road I came to check out Lava Lands Park. I pulled in, the visitor center was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I just went down to a trailhead and started a 1.5 mile roundtrip hike to Benham Falls. There was a french family hiking behind me and I said Bonjour to the little boy who seemed enthralled with me. He smiled. And so did the mom. Didn't understand a word they said to each other, but we had a bond. The falls weren't really impressive as far as height or anything, but there was a really cool whirlpool and they got up to a really good speed. Looked like they would be really fun to go white water rafting on or something.
Got out of that park and went north to find Black Butte. I had a beer earlier on the trip that told the story of a volcanic butte with a river coming out of it from under former lava flows. I had to find it since it was only about 40 miles away. Went through a couple towns and thought I was pretty close so I thought I'd get gas on my way out of town after the hike. It was kind of hard to find, so I drove around a little, got some advice from a small store, and decided to do a small hike to the headwaters of Metolius River, the one that comes out of the butte. It was pretty cool, the best part of the hike was when one guy told me the wrong direction, and I just went the wrong way down the river for awhile. I talked to some people along the way, saw a guy fly fishing and catch two fish while I was watching, and got some nice pictures. After the headwaters, I followed the map to find the hike to the summit of Black Butte.
The roads had names like 1120, 1430, etc. so I knew they'd be probably gravel or something, but I wasn't expecting basically like red tree bark shavings and rocks the whole way. It was fun, but I was worried about my tires a couple times, also by this point my gas tank is about on E. But I get to the hike and it says its only 2 miles, so I set off. It was pretty steep, though. I only saw two groups of people come down as I went up, and I was the only one on top when I got there. Evidently, Black Butte has been used as a fire lookout station for over 100 years. They still have all three buildings on the top of the mountain, and the view was incredible. There are a good 4-5 mountains around and there was a controlled forest burn going on in the distance as well. I sat and ate some canned Beefaroni and had a cookie at the top before I headed back down to the car.
The gas light came on almost immediately and I tried to use neutral most of the way down the mountain. I went about 4 miles without using drive at all! Was getting worried about running out of gas, but then I saw a sign for a Chevron in ½ mile. Sigh of relief. Let the gas man pump my mandatory full service gas and punched in Boise in the GPS. GPS said 8 hours. I laughed. I love challenging my GPS's estimated time of arrival. I speed a little bit, not much anymore. I once did about 100 mph for about 3 hours straight from St. Louis to Omaha. My new edited speeding technique is 7-9 miles above the speed limit. Cops usually don't pull you over unless you're going 10 over. Anyway, I stopped about 4 times for a total of about an hour, including a disgusting Taco Bell dinner, and I still beat the GPS by two hours. Crossed into mountain time, so I arrived at my Motel 6 around midnight. I am beat. Gonna have to peace out if I wanna get up at a decent hour.....