Notes from the Road -- Part 2

Vacation has been over for nearly a week, but it's taken me this long to sort through photos and get them up here. Tsk, tsk. This is largely due to the other roadtrip that I had to take a day after returning from vacation. The former features no interesting photos and the stories are of an arcane technical nature that would only interest the most hardy engineering geeks. Enough said.

Big River

On the second part of our vacation, we left central Idaho and traveled down to the Columbia River. For many miles we drove along the northern bank of the river in Washington state. Now, this is a really, really big river--biggest one west of the Continental Divide? I think so. The river is wide but it flows through a dry land of sagebrush and scrawny grass. The only bright green comes right at the riverbank, unless river water has been used to irrigate farmland.

We saw plenty of large-scale agriculture: huge green rectangles sloping down to the river. Orchards and vineyards were common. We stopped by the Columbia Crest Winery, an oasis of green and a faux Mediterranean villa in the middle of dry grassland. They were generous in the tasting room -- I decided that the winery's reds are far better than its whites -- and we took a couple of cases out the door. Oh, it's not easy to live in wine-starved Utah!

Back on the road, the river sunk or the land rose. As we continued driving west, walls of rock rose higher and higher on each side of the river. The road clung to the top of the cliff. We stopped at a singular place perched on the edge: a concrete, scale model of Stonehenge that had been built early in the last century as a memorial to WWI veterans. Go figure.

The Land of Squish

At last we crossed the river and drove south into Oregon. After a couple of hours the wheat fields gave way to the snow-covered peaks of the Cascade Range. We spent the night up in the mountains by the side of a small lake, where the frogs sang "Doo-weeep" all night, the calls cascading as froggy lovers tried to find one another in the dark. This area was very wet and squishy. In some places the trees seemed to be made entirely of Spanish Moss, which I hardly think is good for the trees.

The Deep and Dark

The next day, we continued south into California. At dusk we rolled into Lava Beds National Monument, the final goal of this vacation. An ancient lava field peeked through high desert grassland. In some places, the surface consisted entirely of jumbles of black rock, while in others the lava lay a foot or two beneath the surface. The monument was home to many lava tubes. For those who love details, there are over 502 known caves and other lava tube features within the monument, with a combined length of over 28 miles.

Our family cared more about getting underground and exploring! Our gear: headlamps, knit caps and leather gloves. And a map, of course. The entrance to a lava tube was not generally impressive, sometimes little more than what looked like a pile of rocks. Once inside things got dark and interesting.

The tubes often had smooth, rounded ceilings and flat floors. Sometimes the frozen lava on the floor of the tube still held the ripple pattern from the ancient flow. Other caves contained jumbled piles of rocks from places where the ceiling collapsed. The map showed the clearance in various parts of the caves, with a maximum clearance indicated in feet. I began to dread the parts of the map that indicated "2". A two-foot clearance often meant either rolling on my side or inching along on my back, pushing myself forward with my hands.

Did I mention that the lava was often sharp? In addition, the ceiling was often studded with little "lavacicles", also know as "shark's teeth" that formed when the rock on the ceiling partially melted as molten lava flowed in the bottom of the tube. I confess that I had some interesting bruises when we were done exploring!

Many of the caves were damp from water seeping through the ceiling. A few had ice in the deeper regions. You wouldn't think that much could live in a completely dark cave, but the damp rocks were often covered with mats of bacteria ("cave slime"). These colonies were easy to spot because they were hydrophobic, meaning any water on them beaded up in a mass of tiny droplets. These places glittered silver and gold when the flashlight hit them. Fabulously unexpected and beautiful to see.

A final observation on the cave environment: the air was so humid that your breath condensed in front of your face and then hung around for many seconds, like a ghost, a ghost that you had brought to life then and there. Each time, I watched the twisting vapor for a recognizable form and wondered what such a ghost might have to say to me.