Day 40

A friend asked us at church today if we wanted to go with them up to the Rogue River Gorge. This is a fairly narrow channel which the Rogue River races through at incredible speed and force. It's carved out of lava rock and there are a number of places you can see open ends of lava tubes from when Mt. Mazama erupted thousands of years ago.

Charlie wasn't able to come with us, he had to run the p.a. at church for the evening program, so it was just the girls and me with our friends Rosalee and Dana. Kind of a girls' day out. Fun!

We also stopped the Natural Bridge - just a couple miles further down, also made of lava rock. It's a bed of hardened lava rock that the river goes through - the river actually disappears under the rock and comes up a few hundred feet away. We hiked about a half mile up the trail to where we could get right down on the riverbank, when it started pouring rain! We had a great time hiking back to the car in the downpour.

Stopped at the fish hatchery on the way back down from the mountain. The girls had a great time feeding the fish - there are food stations provided where you can buy a handful of food for them for a quarter. We barely made it back to the van there before it began to rain again!

The perfect end to a fabulous day... a gorgeous rainbow split the sky. I especially liked how this photo came out with the tree in silhouette in front of it.