Lava Beds

Hey! We finally visited the famous Lava Beds. Strangely enough, we never did it in California. Looking at the map we realized that it is actually closer to Oregon than to any big town in California. We also made several visits to this place. 

This park is great to visit. It is not crowded as all even during high tourist season because it is so far off the beaten track. It is rather hot in the summer and not many good short trails to walk. But it has a great drive with several view stops.

The main attraction of this park are caves formed by lava. We actually visited several, all the easy ones. The caves are roughly subdivided into three categories: easy, medium and hard. As we had neither equipment not desire to crawl through the hard ones we just chose the easy ones. After the while they all start looking the same. The vexing part was climbing down the long, narrow and very steep stairs only to be confronted with a dead end. Of course we never saw any bats. They make a big deal about bats and some disease was rampant during our visit.

To explore the caves one is required to carry a flashlight and we got a couple of really nice ones. One cave is illuminated and paved: it is a good introduction to the caves in general. The hard one actually require a map which you can buy at the visitor's center.

The Lava Beds are full of desert plants and is a nice place to view a wildlife. We saw a coyote and a hawk carrying a small animal in its claws on the way to the park. 

Black basalt field

Schonchin Butte