Monday 24 September 2007

A geology lesson for us all

So here we are on our way to the Redwoods National Park on the coast of California. We have pulled into a funny little KOA “Kamp Ground” and opened a bottle of red wine… Yes, we have our priorities right :-) So if this post gets a little incomprehensible later on it’s because we are getting close to the bottom of the bottle. Oh, and it’s one of them big 1.5lt bottles too.

Crater lake… The volcano eruption happened some 7700 years ago and was 150 times bigger than the 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens. The lake was formed after the eruption when the top of the volcano collapsed in on itself. The most notable feature of the crater is Wizard Island, a small cinder cone that has risen from the crater. The lake contains some of the cleanest water on earth apparently, but you can’t get to it to try it unless you book yourself onto one of the boat trips that had stopped running when we were there… D’oh! The lake is also the deepest lake in North America and the 7th deepest in the world, averaging over 1900ft deep. The geological features are amazing and you can see by reading the many information boards around the lake exactly how certain features have come to be. As always the visitors centre is the place to start any National Park trip and Crater lake is no exception. There are displays, story boards, videos etc etc that give you the full low down on the area.


The whole lake is encircled by a road with plenty of pullouts, which is a bit of a novelty as every other road in America is just that, a road… no stopping allowed! So anyway, we did half of the lake. I had a stinking cold that day and was desperate to get out and explore the trails, but really didn’t feel up to it, so I just sneezed out of the window every half mile or so!
We left Crater and headed off to the Lava Beds National Park and finally arrived at about 7pm. We camped at the only camp ground in the park. In the morning we awoke to find a gaggle of Park Rangers taking photos of Charlie Camel and whispering quietly amongst themselves. When we finally got up, we showed them around together with half of the camp site. When we finally managed to get packed up and out of the camp ground, first stop was the visitors centre. We grabbed the maps and info from the park ranger on duty and then checked out the exhibits. This is where we sat on a sofa for the first time in 2 months!!! It was fantastic… you lucky sods back home have no idea how lucky you are to be able to sit on a sofa every day! We watched a 10 minute video all about the Modac Indians who inhabited the area before being unceremoniously shoved off their land by the white dudes many huindreds of years ago, and also about the Lava beds and the caves that abound in the park. We got to do some proper exploring today and checked out several of the caves around the park… wow!!
Just be content to look at the pics and then maybe I’ll explain later about Lava tubes, drop offs and Aa, ;-)



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi guys, just to let you know Seven Sisters was blummin' brilliant - but everyone was missing you guys!