After I received a good morning pic from Arlo, I looked at my Passport America book and saw I could get a stamp at the Lava Beds National Monument, south of Tulelake, CA.
Great choice for our next adventure. Lava Beds is truly a remote place, winding around mountains and along rivers. We are staying in the National Monument Campground, no hookups but interesting topography. They had a fire here in 2021 but saved the area around the campground.
This hill is behind our campground, half saved, half not.
This was home to the Modoc Indians for many years. The Modoc War was located here. Saw some rock art.
Walked on lava rock.
And toured many of the caves that were created from lava tubes. So interesting. First time Bill or I have gone caving without a guide. We could just walk at our leisure. We had our headlights but didn’t have knee pads or helmets so couldn’t crawl into some of the places.
While we were in the cave, we met 2 Oregonians, Roger and Randy. They helped us figure out where we wanted to explore in Oregon after we leave this place. If you look at an atlas of eastern Oregon, there isn’t much there. So now we have a plan for later.
Some of the caves had stairs that took us down in the abyss, others we had to crawl over stones.
This cave had some scull and bones from long ago when the Modoc used these caves as their refrigerators. It was really cold down there.
This is the one cave we had to crawl over some rocks just to get to the entrance. Then you had to bend over to walk around. We decided not to go further in that cave. There are 24 caves to explore and each one is different.
As we hiked back to some of the caves, the wildflowers and one big old cedar tree took my eye.
While we were exploring caves, Shann, Carl and Arlo were climbing at Donnie Pass
Great place to learn more about our wonderful world.
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