Umpqua LIghthouse

When spending the summer on a coast, it is a natural thing to visit the  lighthouses that have guided ships to safe harbors for so many years.


This week we went to the Umpqua Lighthouse, which is just up the road from our campground.

We choose to go on the volunteer-guided tour.

After looking through the museum rooms, we went over to the lighthouse itself.

It is built out of bricks with stucco on the outside.

The Umpqua 1st-order Fresnel lens was made with red and clear glass, in 1890 in Paris France.

It was really quite pretty.

Below is a video that Craig made of the light beams at night. It runs for about 2 minutes.

And finally:

We did go back down to the lake to have a picnic supper. It was a bit chilly, but that kept the mosquitos in hiding.

Life is good.

Glass Mountain

First a quick answer.  No, you cannot walk behind the water of Burney Falls.  Much of the water is actually coming thru the porous rock face rather than over the top of the falls.  An interesting place indeed.

On Saturday we went off to another amazing place. 


Glass Mountain.


Pictures cannot do justice to the views of this vast, alien landscape. 


 Wikipedia: 
"Glass Mountain consists of a spectacular, nearly treeless, steep-sided rhyolite and dacite obsidian flow that erupted just outside the eastern caldera rim and flowed down the steep eastern flank of Medicine Lake volcano."

It is one huge pile of pumice, lava rock, and obsidian. 

It looks and feels like another planet!


Or like the Earth vomited up  gigantic amounts of rock from deep down inside her.

We drove there and parked at one of several dirt parking areas.  No one else was around.  Craig climbed up to the top of this mound, but I decided it was not my kind of climb after the first few feet, and backed off.  The rocks were very loose and very sharp.  I figured I might be able to get up to the top, but was afraid my old inflexible body would have trouble getting back down. (In fact Craig did cut himself slightly on his descent and commented that gloves would have been helpful.)


I walked along the road that bordered the glass mound and found a much easier way up to the top.  


We took too many pictures to post. If you ever do get to that area, you must see Glass Mountain for yourself.

This is one pile of obsidian that was about eight to ten feet tall.  Black Glass! 


One thing I found very interesting was that there was no dust.  Just loose  rock.

Here and there a few trees do manage to grow.  I took this picture of one tiny tree sprouting in a crack in the rock.  


That's the magic of pictures.  Because I am including it here I will probably remember it far into the future.

We left the Glass Mountain and drove to a pleasant, but deserted picnic area on Medicine lake.  


I'm getting to like this picnic business!  Grapes, trail mix, a small snack bar and a few sweet dried plums were lunch this day.


What kinds of things do you snack on when you visit places like this?  No restaurants for many miles!