I wake up to a gentle shaking this morning. "It's 7:30. There's a cave walk at 9:00 I'd like to take. Can we please? Huh? Please?" Groan. Anyone who knows me knows I'm grumpy in the morning, especially when you wake me up. I pull myself out of bed and start getting ready. "You have to wear closed toe shoes." OK. "Where's your water bottle? We have to take water bottles." Dirty look. Steve finds my water bottle without help. "Did you pack a flashlight?" No, I packed a water bottle, Steve packed a flashlight. Almost ready. "Grab a breakfast bar to eat on the way. Then we'll be on time." Not my favorite way to start the day. I need to work on teaching Steve what vacation and retirement mean.
But it was a good idea. The weather was cool and the skies were blue. A walk through a lava field shows the variations in the lava. Although it all looks black at a distance, it seems to come in all colors of the rainbow.
And there are all different textures. This one reminds me of trying to frost a cake.
There are smooth boulder shapes and rough spiky rocks. These look like rising dinner rolls.
Note the tiny evergreen in the middle of the picture. This lava flow is 2000 years old and plants are just beginning to sprout in pockets where dust has collected.
The goal of the walk is to visit a lava cave. These are formed as the lava flows downhill. The outside of the flow cools, forming a shell that the hot lava flows through. When the hot lava stops, the hollow shell remains. At some point, part of the shell collapses, creating an opening to the cave.
This was the first cave we came to.
According to the map, it goes in quite a long ways. I guess I'm not into spelunking. I'm not crawling on volcanic rock to get into a cave. The cave that was the goal of the walk was Indian cave. This cave was actually used by indigenous people ages ago for shelter. I ran out of steam before we reached the cave and stop to rest and turn back.
The rest group moves on and I experience the silence. I have never not heard anything. As I head back to the parking lot, at times I can even see the highway that borders the park, but hear no traffic. Apparently the volcanic rock absorbs sounds. An insect buzzes me for about 15 seconds and if I turn my head just right I can hear the wind against my ear. Pretty amazing.
There is a 52 mile system of fissures along which these volcanoes erupted between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago. Eruptions occurred roughly every 2000 years, so we're overdue.
Steve's out taking a night time walk, hoping to get some good pictures of stars. We forget how beautiful the stars are when there's no light pollution. If he gets any good pictures, I'll post them tomorrow.
