Today, we’re in the ✨S0uTh 0f FrAnC3✨, which is a destination that carries with it some implied glitz and glam. Indeed, when you picture the “South of France”, chances are that you think of places like Nice, Cannes, or Saint-Tropez. Most of these post-card “French Riviera” destinations are over near the Italian border, in an administrative region called Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. But that ain’t where we’re going today. Instead, we’re going to the even-further-south region of Occitania, which was actually only formed in 2016 when France merged the administrative regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées. But don’t let its administrative “newness” fool you: Occitania has a story that dates back farther than France itself.
This many mountains is just insane to me. Prior to this trip, this was not what I pictured when I thought of Oregon. This was downright RUGGED! And it was gorgeous. The three mountains in closest proximity to Black Butte, and to one another are the Three Sisters for which this area is named: Middle Sister, North Sister, and South Sister. All three of these mountains are sleeping volcanoes. The North and Middle Sister last erupted ~14,000 years ago and scientists think it’s unlikely that they’ll ever erupt again. However, the South Sister erupted as recently as 2,000 years ago, and could feasibly erupt again. There have been sporadic reports of volcanic rumblings deep within South Sister since 1866, and there have been a couple of minor scares since the late 1980s. Nothing has ever happened, but there is a big pot of magma a few miles beneath the peak of South Sister. Did I mention that South Sister is also the easiest of these mountains to climb? Sign me up for that!! 😵
This quest brought us to the edge of the world, literally, to the bone-chillingly massive cliffs of Látrabjarg. Here’s a spoiler alert for you: it was mind-blowingly gorgeous. A friend of mine recently pointed out that I’ve said similar things about a great many of the places I have visited, so let me up the ante a bit: this was one of the top 5 most beautiful places I’ve seen, EVER.
