History, Hikes, and Lots of Lava Tube Caves. Super Cool!

 

Lava Tube Caves - a new experience and we loved it!

I just got reminded how incredibly awesome our National Parks are. When Rog added Lava Beds National Monument to our itinerary, I was expecting more walks through lava beds and maybe a hike up a cinder cone. What I wasn’t expecting was a whole new experience – lava tube caves! This park is also ground zero for the Modoc wars, which is fascinating history. Throw in a couple hikes and it’s the full meal deal.

We arrived at Indian Wells campground in Lava Beds National Monument on a Saturday afternoon, 5/17. We were a little nervous since the campground was first come/first served and we knew there weren’t a lot of spots big enough for our rig. Luckily, we managed to squeeze into a site (#20). After folks pulled out Sunday morning, we were literally the only rig in the campground so we moved to a larger, more level spot (#23).

The Visitor Center was an easy walk from the campground, so we checked it out Sunday and talked to the Ranger about what not to miss. There is no way we were going to see everything, so it helped to have a game plan. There are over 900 caves in the park and about two dozen of those have developed entrances and trails. The developed caves are graded by difficulty and note the length of the cave, features, and what to be aware of. With no caving experience or equipment, it was a no brainer to stick with the “least challenging” caves. The Ranger helpfully informed us that all the features, like the colorful mats of hydrophobic bacteria and different volcanic formations, found in the more difficult caves were also in the easy caves.  I was thrilled to know I didn’t need to navigate a labyrinth or belly crawl to see the good stuff. And yes, one of the caves had a section with a ceiling height of less than 12 inches! Yikes.

Another great park with lots to explore.

Mushpot (770ft) is the introductory cave and the only one with lighting and interpretive signs inside the cave. Even in the easiest cave, there were a couple places we had to duck through low passages. We’ve done Carlsbad Cave and Kartchner Caverns but this was a totally new experience. For one thing, volcanic caves are very different from caves formed by water and erosion. The formations aren’t created by the slow buildup of minerals, but liquid stone.  The molten lava flows cooled around the sides first, forming huge tubes. As the eruption slowed most of the molten lava drained out leaving the hollow tubes behind. These caves may not be as pretty as the crystal formations we’ve seen in other caves, but the lavacicles, drip stone, and streams of frozen stone where you can still see the lava flow patterns are facinating!

Lavacicles. How cool is that?!

Hyrophobic bacteria form colorful mats on the cave ceilings and walls. 

Dripstone formed as lava ran down the walls and cooled.

Duck!

The mushpot - formed when lava under pressure bubbled up from a crack below.

The second cave we explored was Valentine Cave (1635 ft). Here, you are on your own. No lights, no tour guides. And that was really fun too! For a “least challenging” cave, I was surprised at how many sections were so low we had to duck walk or crawl on hands and knees. It made me glad we didn’t try any of the “most challenging” ones. We had extra flashlights, including a powerful spotlight that was great for seeing the areas where the ceilings were high or looking down smaller tunnels that we weren’t willing to crawl through. It was a new adventure and I gotta say, we loved it! There was nobody else in the cave and at one point we turned off all our lights. Wow, total darkness is a trip! It’s certainly not something we experience often and I get why they say bring extra flashlights. It would be terrifying to try and navigate by feel alone.

Official Cave Greeters. Check out that lizard side-eye. Lol. 

Just inside the entrance - right or left? Choose wisely. 

Lava stream flowing through the tube and now frozen in time.

Rog illuminates the tunnels as we proceed.

The footing is treacherous. 

The going is low and slow, so we skipped this side tunnel.

No one told me there would be cave spiders!!
Can you see the web? Arrrrgh!

On Monday we stayed above ground and took the pups for a drive. Like many National Parks, no dogs are allowed on any of the trails. Though to be fair, with Raney’s bum leg and Riley’s aversion to walking on rocks, they wouldn’t have been happy on a hike anyway. We spent some time at Petroglyph point. The large rock formation used to be an island in what is now Tule Lake.  Early Natives would canoe out to the stone and carve the soft volcanic tuff. In 1920, much of Tule Lake was drained by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to create 100,000 acres of farmland, so we could drive right up to petroglyphs, no canoe required. What remains of the lake is now the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge known for its bird habitat and migratory waterfowl.

Bunch grass and cheat grass prairie next to huge lava flows.

The lava flows are barren and perilous to traverse.

Petroglyphs carved into the volacanic tuff. 

The Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge abuts the national monument.

Rog has a keen interest in early US history and was eager to learn more about the Modoc War. Like most of the interactions between the government and native tribes, there were a lot of broken promises, betrayal and bloodshed. In 1864, after years of conflict with settlers, the Modoc reluctantly signed a treaty and were moved to a reservation in Oregon. Extreme hardship on the reservation and clashes with other tribes there prompted a group of the Modoc to return to their homeland in 1870 and demand a reservation there. In 1872, a botched attempt to arrest the leader, Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack, marked the beginning of the Modoc War. A small band of Modoc retaliated by killing 14 settlers. The US Army sent in 600 troops to capture 60 Modoc warriors and their families. The Modoc retreated to the safety of a volcanic maze known as the Stronghold where they held out against vastly superior numbers for almost five months. Walking through the Stronghold it was easy to see how a smaller determined force familiar with the land could have held off the army for so long.

Captain Jack's Stronghold is a maze of trails and caves in a volcanic formation.

We found lots of hidey holes as we...

...walked the maze of trails.

Here you can see the remnants of fortifications built by the Modoc.

In April of 1873 General Canby, the only general killed in an Indian War, was attacked during peace talks. Although Captain Jack had argued against the attack, other Modoc believed if the leaders of the army were killed the soldiers would retreat, as was their own tradition. Unfortunately, it only escalated the conflict. After the army managed to cut the Modoc warriors off from their water supply, they were captured and Captain Jack along with three other tribal leaders were hung. Rog bought a book, “Spirit in the Rock” about the Modoc War and then realized he was familiar with the author, Jim Compton, who had been a Seattle TV personality. Anyone else remember "The Compton Report"?

A memorial to General Canby.

Usually, I am thrilled whenever we have wildlife encounters during our travels. But I want to go on record as saying the mule deer here are serious twits! We were enjoying a campfire in the evening and Raney, who was laying quietly beside me, woofed. I looked up to see a young mule deer about 40 feet away and slowing approaching. He didn’t have fawn spots, but still had a fuzzy baby coat and ears the size of Texas. Lol. He wasn’t the least bit afraid and seemed very curious about Raney. I tried to shush her, but the deer kept moving closer. Then Riley, who was in the coach, got wind of our visitor and started expressing his displeasure. That still didn’t faze the youngster. Then the rest of the herd, got in on the fun. Five mule deer would approach and retreat and then dance back into our campsite again. I swear the deer were deliberating baiting the dogs, they did everything but thumb their noses at them. Lol. The next night they came back for more reindeer games, but I wasn’t having a repeat of the previous night’s theater and chased them off. Geesh.

Our first curious visitor.

Then the whole family got in on the fun. 

On the second night they got chased away before the games could begin again. Lol. 

On Tuesday, we hiked up Schonchin Butte to the fire tower. The trail and fire tower were built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in 1942. The trail gains 500 feet of elevation in less than a mile, giving you a great view of cinder cones, craters, and lava flows. You can even see Mt. Shasta in the distance. Unfortunately, the area was devastated in the 2020 Caldwell Fire that burned 31,000 acres, nearly half of the land in the national monument. The fire tower isn’t currently manned, but it was fun to look inside. I also was intrigued with all the different colors of the lava stone and found samples in red, yellow, orange, purple, black and white. The colors are a result of the different mineral content in the rocks.

We are headed up to that tiny dot on top.

The fire tower built by the CCC in 1942.

The trail up went through areas burned by the Caldwell Fire.
A few trees were spared and provided a bit of welcome shade.

We were able to look inside, guess where I'm standing when the lightning strikes. Lol.  

Cinder cones, craters, lava beds, and Mt. Shasta in the distance.

Look at all these different colors of lava rock!

We also explored two more caves. Skull cave (580 ft) is a remnant of three very large lava tubes, stacked one on top of the other. Cold air is trapped in the lowest sections creating a year-round ice floor. It got its name from the hundreds of bones that were found inside, including two human skeletons.

Skull cave entrace. The tunnel is huge!
No need to duckwalk, you could drive a bus in there.

We descended lots and lots of stairs to get to the lowest level.

Yep, that's ice on the floor. Brrrrrrrrr!

And of course, we saw bones and the cave's namesake skull. 

Sentinel Cave is one of the only developed caves with two entrances so you can go in one entrance of this huge lava tube and come out the other. We saw several deep pits and there were walkways built across areas of collapsed tunnel floor. Most of the trail hugged the side of the tunnel wall with large boulders littering the floor of the tube.

The lower entrance to Sentinel Cave.

Sentinel had some really deep holes which we carefully avoided.

Voids showed that some of the fomations are actually hollow.

Another huge lava tube, with a trail mostly hugging one wall.

Our attempt at a cave selfie. Lol. 

Since we’d left Crane Prairie early, we had one extra day to spend somewhere. We debated staying at Lava Beds another night, but Rog found a place he wanted to kayak. So, we packed up on Wednesday, 5/21, and moved on. It turned out to be a brilliant idea, but more on that in our next post!  

Plymouth Park, Madras, Crane Prairie, and Pitiful Pups – Oh No!

 

Hard to beat this view from Crane Prairie Campground near Bend, OR.

We’d stayed at the Marina in Umatilla, OR on our big trip in 2016 so decided to try out the Corps of Engineer (COE) campground, Plymouth Park, just across the Umatilla river on the Washington side for this trip. We arrived on Friday, 5/9, with reservations for four nights. We spent a lot of that just hanging out, letting Riley play in the sprinklers, and taking the puppers for walks. Large groves of black locust trees in the park were covered in white flowers with a light honeysuckle/jasmine scent that was heavenly.

Our home away from home.

Groves of blooming black locust smelled sooooo good!

Riley in the sprinklers (again). Lol.

Raney sits pretty in front of a culvert decorated by local *ahem* artists.

There wasn’t very good river access from the campsites, so we drove Raney and Riley across a small bridge to the day use area on an island in the river. The boat ramp was open, but the road into the day use area was blocked off. We did some 4-wheeling on dirt tracks and then parked and walked the dogs down to the closed area for some off leash fun. We noticed that the dump station at the campground was closed when we arrived and things went downhill from there. On Saturday the park water shut off completely and the public bathrooms closed. By Sunday there were only a few hardy souls left in the campground. The maintenance folks got the water working on Monday and had port-a-potties delivered since the septic system was still out of commission when we left on Tuesday, 5/13.

A little off road exploring. 

Off leash and headed for the water at a dead run. Lol

Dogfish in their element.

Our next stop was an overnighter in Madras, OR. We parked in the lot behind the Chamber of Commerce building, which was a Harvest Host site. The staff were super friendly and we were right across the street from the Town Hall and an easy walk to lots of shopping and restaurants. We opted for dinner at Rio Distinctive Mexican Cuisine which featured some unique and truly delicious variations of mole, one of my favorite Mexican dishes. They made the guacamole appetizer table-side which was also a treat.

 Harvest Host site at the Madras Chamber of Commerce.

A delicious dinner with three different types of mole. Yum!

Rog was looking forward to doing some fishing at our next destination, Crane Prairie Reservoir which is known for its rainbow trout. Our friend, the wind, was back for the drive to Crane Prairie Campground on Wednesday, 5/14. Since it was early season, the park was still first come/first served and nearly empty. We picked a lovely spot right on the water with stunning views of the snow-covered mountains across the lake.

The view was spectacular!

We could launch the kayak right from our campsite, but unfortunately the wind and weather were not very cooperative. One downside to an inflatable kayak, even a moderate breeze can be challenging and white caps on the lake are a deal breaker. Rog kept a close eye on the weather reports and it looked like he had one good chance on Friday, the temps should be in the 50’s instead of 40’s with winds calming to about 10mph. The lake was dead calm at 6:30am when we walked the dogs, but by the time he was on the water it had gotten breezy again. After about an hour or so on the water, he came back to shore for a quick potty break (thank you morning coffee). When he stepped out of the boat, his foot slipped and SPLASH, into the lake he went. Those waders that do such an excellent job keeping water out, do an equally excellent job keeping water in. Lol.  So, he sloshed back to the RV and called it a day. 

Heading out - fishies beware! Lol.

Rog on the water.

Drying out after Rog went *into* the water. 😁

We found some forest service roads near the campground where the pups could enjoy off leash walkies and of course they love their daily dunk in the lake. That is, until the pups both fell apart. Ugh. I noticed some red patches on Riley’s chest above his legs. Oh no! Hot spots. He usually gets them on his head, so these got fairly large before we noticed them. I have topical meds to treat him, but that was the end of his fun in the water. No more skinny dipping dogos. He looked so sad and confused when we wouldn’t let him in the lake. Poor boy. Just in case the topicals don’t do the trick, I called our vet and have oral antibiotics being delivered to Rog’s Mom in Redding (we’ll be there on the 22^nd). Hopefully we won’t need them, but better safe than sorry.

Long walkies along a forest service road.

Riley is not happy about his hot spots. 

Check out the side-eye I get when I say, "No lake time."

Then Raney started limping badly. Maybe Riley was getting too much attention? Not sure what happened, as we couldn’t find any injury, but long walkies are also off the table for a while. Luckily, mastiffs are pretty content being coach dogs, at least until everybody is healthy again.

They don't look like they're suffering too badly. Lol.

We bundled up for a campfire Friday evening, then woke up to the sound of steady rain around 3am. Rain isn’t a problem, but there was a potential for snow on Sunday and we saw no reason to hang around for that. Lol. So, we decided to cut our stay at Crane Prairie short by one day and left on Saturday, 5/17. Next up is Lava Beds National Monument which should be fun!

Campfire time!