Lava Beds National Monument (part 1)

Our volcano tour continued as we traveled south just into California.  We have discovered that National Monuments tend to be hidden gems, places we haven't heard of but turn out to be fascinating.  Lava Beds is one of those places.

It started with a lava field driving tour, which always intrigues us.  John's even getting better at guessing the relative age of a lava field based on revegetation.

Hawaii gets referenced a lot at other volcanic parks - most places don't have pictures like this to share:

Our first hike was to the top of a hill - Schonchin Butte with a lookout tower on top:

Hey, it's Mount Shasta!  Also of great interest, the sky is finally pretty clear.  We hadn't outrun the wildfire smoke yet, but we did have one good day at Lava Beds to admire this beautiful peak:

I'm always amazed to see things growing in cinders.  On the other hand, we also learned in Hawaii that volcanic soil is great for growing plants.

Cinder stairs up to the lookout tower (probably made by the CCC, because that's always a good guess in a national park or monument - thank you CCC!):

An expansive lava flow and some haze in the distance:

Cinder cones and other volcanic geology:

Heading out for a walk past the Black Crater:

Checking out the colorful rocks:

And interesting spatter shapes:

A lava bubble near the Fleener Chimneys:

Red innards of the black rock:

One of the chimneys, vents coming out of the earth:

This is the one they cleaned all the trash out of (after finally getting people to stop throwing things in the holes, seriously):

King of the cone:

So here's where things got interesting - there are a ton of lava tube caves in the monument, and some of them (quite a few, it turns out) are open for exploring.  On your own, without a guide, just get a permit at the visitor center and have at it.  We didn't attempt any of the challenging (crawl on your stomach) ones, but we thought about it.

We started with one of the coldest, the Merrill Ice Cave.

The word "ice" should have been a clue... yep, super cold down there!  A nice place to cool off on a hot summer day - and then quickly climb back out to warm up again.

I was ready for some longer hiking/running, legs feeling good, happy it wasn't so smoky.  We set off down the Whitney Butte Trail:

Coming around the butte near the end of the trail, it was the neatest thing to suddenly see a huge lava flow, with more cones in the distance:

The trail comes right up to the base of the flow and stops.  Pretty neat.  John took the opportunity to go roam around on the lava rocks.  It takes a while to get anywhere on a lava flow, at least one without a trail built through it already.

Lizard face:

Each day there are guided cave tours and the rangers give entertaining talks while leading the way through a lava tube.  All geared up with a headlamp and helmet (and ballcap on backward):

Trekking to the cave entrance:

Playing with my camera in the darkness:

Lavacicles, frozen drips in the ceiling:

A big rock that looks like it shouldn't be there - this one might have rolled down in the lava flow?  Or maybe it fell from the ceiling.  I can't recall exactly which neat phenomenon this was:

The ranger pointed out this side passage and John decided to go explore - bye John!

Happily, he did come back, because there was a lot more to see.  Stay tuned!