Lava Beds National Monument

I told Jere we would do whatever he wanted today; I was too busy with other things to decide what to do. So of course we're heading back up to the cold, rainy mountains to a national monument. We leave the warm Redding valley and head up into the mountains. I'm tired of the cold, dreary high desert scenery:

We stop at a roadside rest for lunch and I try to improve my outlook with food: chocolate candy, chocolate brownie and hot chocolate. I get back in the car and the scenery still looks drab but now I'm probably 2 pounds heavier. However, after about ten minutes, the chocolate chemicals reach my brain and the scenery starts looking better!

Then we stop for diesel. We knew this day was coming, but it is still depressing: our first time to pay over $5/gallon for diesel. So I go inside and buy a mocha frappacino to try to keep my spirits up.

We reach our destination, Lava Beds National Monument, and I walk into the visitor center and find out that Jere has brought me to a park to walk through lava tube caves! Small, tubular caves without lights! For people who may not know me as well as others, I'm kindof scared of the dark (though I'm not as scared of the dark as I used to be when I was younger) and I just plain don't like confined places. Jere knows that I don't like caves, so he conveniently failed to mention what we would be doing at Lava Beds National Monument. Joe and Jere are anxious to explore these dark, long holes in the ground, so off we go. No amount of chocolate can make me think that this is going to be fun.

Jere gives me the largest flashlight and Joe gives me one of his flashlights (we have 6 flashlights between the three of us) and we head to explore the lava tubes.

There are very few people here at the park so we have the caves pretty much to ourselves, which is good since we're pulling the trailer and it's easy to find parking when there's no one else around. We climb down the ladder to the Golden Dome cave. The opening looks so narrow to me, I can't believe I'm doing this...I really do not like closed spaces.

So I get down into the cave and it's dark and there are no signs/arrows telling us which way to go and no smooth paths to follow. This is much closer to spelunking than I ever want to be. Spelunking is an activity that I never, ever want to do -- I will go skydiving or bungee-jumping before spelunking. I tell Jere and Joe that I will try one cave, so I shine my two flashlights to check for bats and creepy-crawling things and to see just what I've gotten myself into.

There are some low parts of the cave that are only about 4 feet high and there are some really rocky parts to the cave where it's hard to walk, but I am determined to get through this since Jere and Joe want to do this (and I really really want to get out of this place as quickly as possible). I am doing pretty good til we're about ten minutes into the cave and Jere says he's not sure which way is out. We seem to be walking in circles and everything looks the same to me. Joe says he knows the way out so we follow him and then Jere says he doesn't think we're going the right way. It's at this point that my chest tightens and I start having a hard time breathing--I do not like this! Joe is right and we see a light at the end of the cave and head out. I have an incredible headache by the time we're out.

So we head for our second cave. There are places where the caves have collapsed and I can't help but wonder when they collapsed and how the park knows that the caves we're entering will not collapse. It is raining today and doesn't water help weaken the rocks??? So we just peek into this second cave and then head for our next cave. I'm starting to feel a little better til we're in this cave and Jere mentions that the rocks in the roof look like they're ready to fall down!!! I would yell at him, but I'm still having a hard time breathing and my chest is really tight. We get out of the cave and I am laughing hysterically. Joe asks me why I'm laughing and I explain that I'm about to have a nervous breakdown. Before we go in the next cave I tell them they are not allowed to talk about the cave collapsing and not to tell me if they don't know the way out of the cave.

We leave the park after exploring several caves. I never want to do that again ever. I do not want to go into dark, cold, damp holes in the ground; I can't understand why anyone would want to go exploring dark holes in the ground. However, Joe had a great time.

We drive through the rain towards our campground. This is the first time during the trip that we get lost. Jere neglected to bring maps of California or Oregon or an atlas on the trip, but we make some guesses as to which road to take and end up finding the campground without too many wrong turns.

Jere knows that I really want to see the season finale of the television show Lost tonight, so he makes sure that we are at a campground with cable tv (especially after the very stressful afternoon that I've had exploring dark holes in the ground). So we spend our eveing in front of the boob tube watching Lost.