Lava Beds National Monument

Today we went to the fair in Tulelake, CA and then visited Lava Beds National Monument. I learned that Medicine Lake Shield Volcano is as tall as Mt St Helens but so broad and flat that you hardly notice that it's a mountain, let alone a volcano. There are multiple sites in the area that have erupted in the past and the lava beds are a bunch of lava tubes and caves that were formed when lava ran down the land. As it started to cool, the top formed a crust while the inside was still molten lava. When the eruption ceased, the lava slowly drained out, leaving a hollow tube with neat looking drippy hardened lava icicles and things. There are something like 600 caves at lava beds though only, I think, 22 are developed. We went in Mushpot, a very easy and short cave with some informational signs about the lava tubes, Valentine, which was pretty challenging to do while carrying Henry because of the low ceilings so we didn't go all the way, and Scull Cave, which was really neat because it has a huge high cavernous opening at the entrance and it's very steep and goes all the way down to an ice floor. They used to let people walk on the ice and go all the way into scull cave but it's gotten so much dirt and stuff that it's messed with the clarity and quality of the ice so they blocked it off. Scull cave was named because they pulled out a whole bunch of bones from the bottom of it, and it was important as one of only a few reliable water sources in the area. There is no river coming into it or anything. The ice forms when cold winter air gets trapped in the bottom of the cave and condenses, then freezes. Pretty neat. There are some places where the lava tubes have multiple levels, either because a second lava flow ran on top of a previous tube, or because a second crust formed partway through the cooling process. It's neat to go through the caves in part because we're so used to walking around on dirt floors and this is all rock rock and more rock. You definitely need knee pads and gloves if you do some of the harder caves. I think it would be nice to come back to lava beds sometime with a group of adults and do some of the slightly more challenging caves, though I'm not sure if I'd be up for some of the really serious ones (12-inch high ceiling? So complex you can easily get lost? I dunno about that...).