Fort Rock and Derrick Cave

Stop #1 in our tour of the Oregon Outback was just half an hour down the road at Fort Rock State Park.  None of us had ever been there before, but it's actually really neat.  Story goes that an underwater volcano erupted and when the magma in the vent hit the cold water, it froze in a circle.  And then because there was a giant wall of basalt in a huge lake, gradually wave and wind action eroded and collapsed the side of the wall that faced the predominant wind direction.  Crazy to think how many millennia it took to get to that point!  Anyway, Zephyr and I went exploring the inner wall, Teresa and Dohn walked across the crater, and Dohnele, Emma, and Zoe walked to the middle of the crater.

After Fort Rock, the plan was to drive another half hour to Derrick Cave.  Again, I'd never been there before, but there was a road that I had found on a map called Derrick Cave Road.  Seemed like a good idea.  Unfortunately, although the road was in good shape, we reached a gate that had "No Trespassing" signs all over it.  But I knew the caves were on BLM land, so I knew there had to be another way and we started searching for it.  Since the route from the south was blocked and I didn't see any good access from the east, I tried three different roads from the west.  Each dead-ended.  Finally, I found a road that wasn't great, but kept going.  And going.  And going!  It got really rough and brushy, but eventually it popped out on the main access road which came from the north.  Along the road we came across a few others who were all doing the same thing we were so that was reassuring.

We parked and hiked to the caves just as thunderheads were starting to fire off in the distance.  Derrick Cave is actually an old lava tube that at one point in the Cold War was used as a fallout shelter and emergency food storage.  All that remains now is the cave.  It's really neat because there are a few places where the roof has collapsed and now daylight shines in.

After the hike, we decided that we wanted to try and take the road out to the south (past the No Trespassing signs) because we didn't want to go through the road that we came in on.  So we started off and drove past several more No Trespassing signs.  Finally we saw a house and then we ran into a closed and locked gate.  We quickly turned around as the owners of the home came flying out of their house and starting running toward us.  We took off back to the north as fast as we could go.  And instead of retracing our steps on the rough road to the west, we went out the main road to the north which added about 70 miles of "extra" driving just to go allllllll the way around.

By this time the thunderheads were right over head and it started to rain and hail and lightning bolts were crashing all around us.  But we finally drove out of the storm and by the time we got back to our campsite on Green Mountain, it was dry again, but windy.  But even the wind died down after sunset.  Long story short, if you ever go to Derrick Cave, access it from the north and don't try the road to the south.