That's What She Said: Lava Beds National Monument (part 2)

More running in this fun national monument, this time on the Three Sisters Trail. Lava tube entrances (and possible caves) are all over the place here:

Also little lava hills:

A bit less-defined trail, flashbacks to trail finding during Cowboy Tough (except for the sign part):

Lava bowl amid the sage:

And the three sisters that the trail is named for, with some smoky haze to contend with, but we've seen worse:

Oooo, my favorite cave - called Skull Cave, and this photo cannot even begin to show how big it is:

Sunshine at the entrance, but it's about to get dark...

The trail goes way back into the darkness:

Then you descend a couple steep staircases, and at the bottom there's a pool of ice, in the pitch black. Just like that, you can turn off your light and see and hear absolutely nothing. Pretty eerie and quite an experience.

Next up was Symbol Bridge, with some Native American rock art:

View of the bridge, really a short lava tube shaped like a natural bridge:

While I was playing around on established trails, John drove up to the Medicine Lake area to check out possible camping spots (report was that it's very nice up there although the road in is bumpy). He also found a giant lava flow and of course that called for some exploration.

View from the top after scrambling up - almost higher than the treetops:

Crazy lava formations:

Sometimes there really are enough rocks:

We met back up for another guided cave tour, this one over at Valentine Cave. We recognized the guy on the left (blue shirt) from the previous day's tour, and he said he was staying extra days in the park because he was having so much fun! We could certainly relate.

Here's the part of the cave tour where everyone turns off their lights and you sit in the dark for a few minutes:

This is apparently a "mushpot" - looks like some oozing happened here:

The easiest cave, with lighting and a walkway:

From that to one of the difficult ones, called Labyrinth. We went down the ladder just to check it out and decided we weren't up for crawling around, bumping our heads and getting dirty (at least not today). But John was up for some ladder planking:

So we skipped that, but we did want to explore the Golden Dome. This one was right up our alley. Starting with the neat entrance:

Eventually we found the namesake gold lichen on the ceiling, very pretty!

Yes, everyone should "GO" and "DO" :)

It's very common now to see solar on park service buildings, excellent. We're trying to figure out how John can get one of these installation jobs...

The next day John headed out on a cross-country journey over the Callahan Flow to try to reach Island Butte in the middle of it. I guess, because it was there.

Short but steep climb up onto the lava field:

He can confirm that it takes a very long time to go a short way across a lava field. Lots of picking your way over and around all kinds of interesting obstacles. Holy canoli if an adventure race ever had a checkpoint out in the middle of this...

Nice job reaching the butte!

Trekking back to the regular woods:

He happened upon a tree that has been recently banged up, which made him curious:

Looking around, he located the rock that had done it, complete with a piece of bark still attached:

A bit more detective work - here's where the rock had started out up the hill before it was dislodged and rolled down into the tree. Would have been neat to see that (as long as we weren't in the way):

Later we went up to Mammoth Crater to see this large hole in the ground:

Go Team V!

More cave exploration at Heppe Cave:

This one wasn't so much a cave as a covered pool with a bunch of rocks around it. It was a nice cool place to sit and listen to water dripping from the ceiling. I loved the variety of all the different caves in the park.