Monday, September 07, 2015

What I Did During My Summer Vacation

My Three weeks off can be divided into three discrete sections. During the first week, I took care of a number of things that I'd been putting off doing, like getting my car maintained, renewing my driver's license (it expired last December, a fact which I didn't notice until late May), cleaning up my corner of the garage, and generally getting ready for the second week, during which Greg and I went on a road trip to Lava Beds National Monument and Portland. This past week, I've been going through photos from the trip, listening to music bought during the trip, reading novels, and loafing. Oh, and I made some quacamole. This last is noteworthy because I used avocados from our tree. Usually, the squirrels beat us to them, but for some reason (hawks, drought, what have you), they've been falling down on the job lately. Our tree is a Mexicola avocado tree, which produces avocados with an interesting anise flavor, making for equally interesting guacamole.


As for the Lava Beds trip, I was happy that Greg managed to find the time to go this year, since last year he ended up backing out of the trip at the last minute (we ended up running into my two road trip companions from last year, Lucia and Jellyfish, while we were in Portland - see my music blog about our Portland adventures here).

I had been watching the news about wildfires and their attendant smoke during the week leading up to the trip, but I needn't have worried. If anything, Lava Beds was much more smoke free than last year. The trip up went off as planned (which makes for boring reading - sorry), with our only stops being for gas somewhere north of Redding, and then at a cafe in Weed which I think I've visited every time I've passed through there. The woman at the counter mentioned that she'd just been to Lava Beds and told me to watch out for rattlesnakes, which I thought was funny due to my excessive familiarity with them.

We got to Lava Beds with enough time to wander through Mushpot and Labyrinth/Thunderbolt caves. We also climbed to the top of Schonchin Butte, where the wind did its best to whip us off into space. After hiking back down we were treated to a beautiful sunset.







Unfortunately, the expected starscape wasn't visible due to the cloud cover. My habitual search of the bathrooms for interesting arachnids only turned up one tiny scorpion, which promptly hid underneath the door frame to one of the stalls.

The next day, I had a bad moment when the electronic key fob to my car seemed inoperable (which meant that I couldn't start the car). After some fiddling, during which there really doesn't appear to be a way to start the car without it, it mysteriously started working again. My hypothesis is that the battering it took overnight due to the wind (which constantly uprooted our tent stakes during our stay) while it was in one of the pockets on the inside wall of the tent, somehow caused it to temporarily stop functioning.





During our circuit of cave loop road, we didn't see a single person inside the caves and only a pair of cars on the road. The park we virtually deserted, which is another reason I like it. In fact, the only people we saw inside the caves were in the immense Skull Cave (at the bottom of which we found some icicles), and one guy in nearby Big Painted Cave. Inside the little alcove in the rear floor of Big Painted Cave, there is still a substantial pool of water, partially frozen in places. There was a small trail cam set up to monitor the space, no doubt keeping tabs on what species of animal use it as a watering hole.




Lava tube caves always look like they should be powerfully resonant inside, but the air always ends up being dry and dead sounding. That doesn't stop us from trying though.


The two places we visited that I hadn't visited before were Fleener Chimneys - a series of spatter cones, and Gillem's Camp/Gillem's Bluff. At the end of the bluff trail, there was a pile of rocks containing offerings in the form of stones, coins, and even a small, broken elephant figurine. The view along the scarp was amazing from this vantage point, as are most of the views within the park.






In the evening, we hiked out along Three Sisters trail, going farther than I went with Jellyfish and Lucia last year. We found a massive lava tube, mere feet from the trail. The collapsed portion of the tube gave way to yawning black entrances to the east and west, but there was no safe way to descend to them in the waning light, so we just took pictures from the rim (which in no way do justice to the sight).




On the way back, we went off trail to try to find crickets, using the time honored tradition of cupping our ears and following the sound. Coming back after our unsuccessful attempts to locate them (too many, which made it confusing), I almost stepped on a rattlesnake (which made me laugh, due to the woman in Weed warning me about them). It shot into some nearby scrub, tail buzzing. My subsequent attempts to locate it failed, so I think it eventually wormed its way into some available nook under the plants, maybe even into the covered lava tube it had been resting on. it was dusk by this point, and rattlesnakes (as well as other reptiles), sometimes use this time to soak up some extra heat from warm rocks (or asphalt, which often leads to roadkill).


The night, with a beautiful moon above, once again proved to be not conducive to star gazing.

In the morning, on our way out, we visited Petroglyph Point, joining a ranger-led talk about the Modoc people. We got to try out an atlatl, throwing fletched spears at a target. None of us actually hit it, but I came close. Nearby, we came across a sleeping Barn Owl, snug in a dark recess near the bottom of the cliff. As always, the ground was littered with the bleached bones of rodents.



Leaving Petroglyph Point, we heading north into Oregon, and soon the dreaded smoke reduced the day to an eerie shadow of itself. This lasted for a good amount of time, and was strangely beautiful. Unfortunately, this ghostly beauty comes at great expense.

During a delay caused by one-way traffic control (road repair/construction), we looked left and saw this. Ha.

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