Lava Beds

Well, our journey home was beginning. It had been so much fun so far. The Northwest was great but it really had been a lot of time in the car by this point already. We had to drive from my mom's house to the Meister's home. That was a 5-6 hour trip made a little bit longer by the stops we made. We got to their house in the evening and immediately had to repack the car. We had been enjoying the luxury of leaving some of our stuff at their house, but now we had to commence with the repacking for the long trip to Utah. They were going to come with us and brave the desert heat in July to visit some of the National Parks of Utah. The kids were looking forward to the trip, because Will and Lillia, their children, were their really good friends. The Meisters had the added excitement of getting to use Laurel's parents small RV to travel in. Laurel was a little hesitant about the whole deal, but Brent was all in. It was their chance to travel the west in a large vehicle. We got ourselves as packed as we could the night before and then it was time to head south after that. Our first stop would be in Lava Beds National Monument in the northern part of California.

This was going to be the easiest drive that we had as we just had to head down to Springfield and over on 58 until we reached 97. From there we just went south. I was thinking originally that a stop at Crater Lake would be appealing, but there was actually so much to do in this part of Oregon that I had not experienced. Mt. Thielsen, Mt. McLoughlin, Diamond Peak, Crater Lake, and the list goes on of places I would like to spend some time. Instead we just drove right on through, not seeing the Meisters on the drive. We were able to get to Lava Beds with no issue and find a campsite with a bit of shade around the camp area. They showed up about 15 minutes later and we were ready for a night of camping in the high desert.

Our first goal was to get to some caves. The kids  probably would have been happy to just hang out in the RV the whole time as we took it to ride out to our first set of caves. There was a group of 3 caves. The first of which was Skull Cave. We had a complete lack of information on these caves except that they were rather easy. Skull Cave was like most of the caves that we would see. There was a pile of rocks and a large opening. A path led down to this opening. We were all over prepared with head lamps, long  pants, and long sleeves. As we walked into the cave, we got to turn on our lights but the path was easy to find. There was a set of metal stairs that led down below to where the ice was down at the bottom of the cave. And there the cave would end. We did all the usual parts of caves for the kids of turning off our lights and being really quiet.

Then it was off to the next one. This would take a walk and in the hot desert heat, we were all melting before too long. The kids weren't complaining much, but the heat was going to get to them. The two caves that we checked out next were Big Painted Cave and Symbol Bridge. Both were highlighted by the large amount of petroglyphs in the cave. It is a sad day in the world when you find petroglyphs but wonder if they are real. These were neat as they were like nothing I had ever saw before. They were grayish on this black rock which under the shine of a headlight in the darkness was hard to discern. We found many of them in both caves. They were both rather short and Symbol Bridge was not even a cave really, but just a bridge. We all made sure to cross under the bridge and return back on the other side for a bit of exploring. I was proud of how all the kids were doing and they were interacting together really well.
We went back to the RV and then up to the Visitor Center. We checked that out, but then made our way to the Cave Loop. This was a series of caves all in a short distance. Some were closed and the only one that Brent and I could get to come with us was Will on some of these. The best was definitely Sentinel Cave which had one entrance and one exit. Everyone came for this one and it was well worth it being the longest of the caves that we had spent time in that day. After that one though, we had to exit the road and I think everyone was lava tubed out.

It was back to camp where an exciting new activity was created, The Homeless Game where our children pretended they were homeless and had to gather resources. This was all unknown to us as we went through the usual nature of things by setting up tents, making dinner, blowing up air mattresses, etc... We did enjoy an excellent evening program where our kids were all so very excited to participate in the program. I think the ranger was happy to have them there because there were only a handful of people at the program.
The campground itself was rather full and I was a bit nervous about the boy scout troop nearby. It turned out to be a rather quiet evening with the main distraction being the deer that wandered into our campsite at 2 in the morning. Still, we got a decent night's sleep and were soon prepared for our early morning driving as we had a ways to go. We were heading through Nevada and by the time we were awake, the Meisters had left. They needed to get their A/C fixed and the only place to do that was hours away in Reno. We got ourselves going and were soon on our way to meet up with them later that day.