Our first full day with our European visitors dawned cloudy and cold. The sun soon burned off most of the clouds to the east, so that’s where we decided to go. Michel & Raymonde traveled all the way from Switzerland and we decided to show them a hole in the ground! Literally, Hole in the Ground, a volcanic formation near Fort Rock (our ultimate destination) has always been interesting to us.

We hiked around the rim of the hole, enjoying the sunshine and company of another couple and their friendly hyperactive golden retriever. We continued our tour of Central Oregon to Fort Rock where we had a pique-nique (french for pic-nic) lunch and hiked around the interior of the ‘fort’.

We were dwarfed by the walls of Fort Rock. We stopped at the small historical museum to take pictures, unfortunately they were closed, but there’s a great view of Fort Rock in the background.

What an exciting week we’ve had, hosting our friends Michel & Raymonde from Geneva, Switzerland! They arrived on Sunday, Sept. 16, driving north from Crater Lake in their rental motorhome. They have been traveling around the west for a month already, having flown into Las Vegas to pick up the RV and continued through California visiting every National and State Park they came across! Their enthusiasm for camping, hiking and enjoying the outdoors is contagious!

Michel & Raymonde in Yosemite.

We took a hike today into the mountains. The clouds looked a little threatening, and the smokey haze lay in the valleys to the west. We headed up a trail alongside a canal that took us towards the basin of Brokentop. The canal was dry, but it must be a torrent in the spring.

The path took a turn and we struck out cross-country to get closer to the basin.

We reached a turn-around point and stopped for lunch along a creek. The glacier is still melting, the stream carving a narrow canyon through the pumice and other volcanic rock.

As we hiked back down to the truck we had a great view of Mount Bachelor. Since we had an early start, we were back home by 1 pm, with over 5 miles of mountain hiking to remember.

Happy Birthday to Sailor Tom!