Loving the Lava

There's a lot of good reasons for clicking the pics.... I just can't remember what they are.

The catwalk twist and turns down the side of the hill like a twisty turny thing.

I moved to a boondocking spot down in the tent area and stayed in that spot for one night. And now I've moved to a different boondocking spot in the tent area where I will probably stay till Monday or Tuesday. The spot I'm in now keeps my refrigerator shaded for most of the day, so my fridge stays cooler.

This morning, I went for a walk on the trail that snakes through the lava flow that covers most of this area. I don't like to walk on trails if I can help it, and this is one case where I definitely can't help it.

Walking through the lava flow looks impossible, and I'm not even sure how in the world they built the trail because the lava flow looks all but impassable. The lava has deep fissures and truck-size potholes that are deep enough that the fall would kill you, and if it didn't, the huge jagged rocks at the bottom would.

There's some lava right next to my boondocking site that I can poke around on a little, and I can tell that it would wear out the soles of your shoes in a few hours if you were forced to walk on it. And Lord help you if you tripped and fell on the lava, it would cut you to pieces.

But I didn't have to deal with any of that because I was walking on a very smooth, easy to negotiate paved trail. And the only effort I had to expend was the rather steep climb the trail offered to get back up to the campground.

Theboondork

They called this "The Badlands" and I reckon that was because it couldn't be used for farming, since it was so hard to plow. They couldn't use it for ranching, because once a cow got in there it never got out again, and neither could the cowboy. And it didn't contain any minerals suitable for mining. It appears the only thing it was good for was attracting tourists.

A typical desert plant that can thrive in the most hostile conditions, and seems to enjoy living in a lava flow. It also seems to be a lot more successful at growing hair than I am.

My view of the campground from down in the lava flow.

The walking path that slithers through the lava flow like a drunken Sidewinder, and appears to have been designed by a G.I. the day after payday.

This very old, grizzled, decrepit, half dead tree growing in the lava field, was only the second thing I saw in the area that was older than me.

Some so-called bird experts confuse this very common One-Eyed Bowlegged Grinch with the very rare, and seldom seen  Blue Bellied Weedwacker that I spotted and recorded a few days ago

If you look at my May 5th blog post you can see the Blue Bellied Weedwhacker clearly has TWO eyes....And yet they have the nerve to call themselves experts.

When your walk around the lava flow is done, you still have a rather time-consuming uphill climb to get back up to the level of the campground.

And what did I learned from this endeavor you may ask? I learned that there's a good reason they don't build children's playgrounds on a lava flow.

I learned that black rocks heat up rather quickly so it's best not to go on this walk during the hottest part of the day.

But the most important thing I found out is, I learned almost everything I needed to know about a lava flow during the first five minutes of my walk. At that point I should have quit and used my leftover ambition to accomplish something actually useful such as doing laundry.