Silver Creek Marsh Campground, Freemont National Forest

After leaving Hole-in-the-Ground, we stopped at Fort Rock State Park north of Fort Rock.

Fort Rock is one of about 40 small volcanoes that erupted during the Pleistocene at around the same time as Mount Hood was building its main edifice and Newberry carter pumped out its main basalts. Fort Rock's eruption boiled from a circular vent, creating a donut-shaped extrusion, known as a tuff ring.

The southern portion of the Fort Rock tuff ring was carved away by the wind-driven waves of Fort Rock Lake, the largest of several Pleistocene lakes which covered southeastern Oregon. Fort Rock Lake covered almost 1,000 square miles and reached a maximum depth of about 200 feet.

We then drove on to Silver Creek Marsh Campground in the Freemont National Forest. This campground is located south of Silver Lake on CR-4-11 (which changes to FR-27 at some point). There was a large youth group camped there, so we almost didn't stop, but as the campground extends quite a ways north and south, we camped at the far southern end away from the youth group. It turned out to be a very quiet.