Lake County, Oregon, Day 7: Fort Rock

After seeing the sun set on the dunes, I drove over to Fort Rock.  Using a Lake County District BLM map, I found a spot on a road nearby where I knew I could spend the night in my car (the Dunes are public land, but because of their high use by off roaders, there are regulations preventing camping on the roads in the area).  Fort Rock is an old volcanic feature eroded by the waters of a prehistoric lake.  It's a semicircular rock formation rising 200 feet above the surrounding sagebrush flats.  I hoped to get a morning light photo of it, but the sun was obscure behind clouds:

I drove around to the Fort Rock State Park, but it wasn't open yet, so I drove a little further to a viewpoint of Fort Rock Cave.  In the back of this cave, archaeologists discovered a cache of 70 sandals woven of sagebrush bark.  All were 9000 years old!  I presume the cave is off limits (I think it's on private property, actually).  The cave is in this miniature version of Fort Rock. 

 

At 6, when the park opened, I parked in the lot and walked around the inside of the Rock:

The sun came out a little, finally.

At the far end of the rock, one can see a "bathtub ring," where the Ice Age lake washed against the volcanic rock and smoothed it out.

Here is a photo of some odd cloud shapes:

From here, I next walked around the outside of the rock.  I saw an interesting flower.  No clue what it is.  If my guidebooks don't have it, there's no way to figure it out.  It's amazing that this so impossible to find on the internet.   

Also, I saw one of the irrigated crop circles that surround Fort Rock.  When I pass through the little towns out here, I see lots of towns with no restaurants, no hotels, no gas stations.  But just about every town has a drilling operation, so they're just drawing down that water table.  Wonder how long it will last?

This is the penultimate trip report from my Lake County trip.  Next and finally is Derrick Cave and the ponderosas of the Deschutes National Forest.