The Real Oregon

It’s been a while since we tried Amtrak, so — feeling optimistic — we took the train back up to Eugene from our recent trip to Klamath Falls.

The bad news: We arrived home two and a half hours late. That’s on a four-hour trip. The Coast Starlight is so perpetually late on its northward run that, rumor has it, Amtrak no longer sells tickets to board the train from Eugene north. That’s probably because passengers were dying of boredom in the train stations.

The good news: The run from K Falls to Eugene is utterly spectacular. We sat transfixed in the observation car for hours as the train made its way over the Cascades, through high desert Ponderosa pine on the east side and dense, wet Douglas fir forest on the west. That’s one huge forest, with practically nothing in it except the scars of the Forest Service’s industrial tree farming.

The train track clings to high cliffs, causing passengers to gasp in delight. It goes through an abundance of tunnels and avalanche sheds.

This would make a lovely fall trip; the colors are only just beginning to show at higher elevations this year.

And we would love to go back in winter and see the mountains under snow.

If you don’t mind being late, the fare’s a bargain: $27 one way.

Just over the California border, south of the Oregon city of Klamath Falls, Lava Beds National Monument is a little known and fascinating part of the federal National Park system. Established in the 1920s, the monument contains an extensive system of lava beds resulting from an ancient shield volcano eruption. If that sounds like eighth-grade geology, take heart: the beds contain miles of lava tubes — long underground caverns — that the park service has minimally improved, making it safe and possible for amateur spelunkers to explore, equipped with little more than a good flashlight and a helmet of some kind. (Both are available at the visitor center.)

Wandering these lava tubes is a wild experience if you’ve never done any caving that didn’t involve a guide and a cavern with electric lights. Even though the tubes are pretty safe, and it’s difficult to get thoroughly lost, the first time you come to a fork in the pitch black, a quarter mile underground, you’ll feel your pulse start to beat a little faster. You can go for easy, stand-up walking tubes, or you can spend hundreds of meters duck-walking under a low ceiling. If you’re really determined you can crawl for long distances on your belly.

Lava Beds was also the scene of the tragic Modoc Indian war of 1872-73, in which Captain Jack and a band of renegade Modocs held off the U.S. Army for months by hiding out in the caves.