Another AM & PM day

6/24/2019

We started the morning off with around a 4 mile hike. The hike took us near some lava tubes, that with a permit you can go in them. We had the permit, but they were kinda interesting to get down into. In fact one of them it looks like you needed to repel down into, so we passed on them knowing that there were more and, supposedly better ones at a different spot.

The hike took us up and around a cinder cone so we could looked down into it. Well, guess what in order to look down you first had to climb up to the top of the silly thing, switch back after switch back, then lots of steps going down.

It was a pretty good trail with a little shade every so often. For the last mile we bailed on the trail and took a service road back to the parking lot, no trees on that road. We were getting a might warm by the time we reach the Jeep.

More words below

You remember those lava tubes I mentioned earlier, that hike was a mistake. Ok, so we have already hiked a little over 4 miles, which is petty much our limit.

We arrive at the next spot and this is where they need better signs. First it was  another trail where you needed to walk from one cairn to the next and so on According to the map it was 1/2 mile to the tubes.

The literature we had these tubes named. We leave the Jeep walking from cairn to cairn, Super easy to get turned around in this area it all looks the same, lava lava everywhere. Now the “trail” for the most part is nothing but loose rocks anywhere from marble size to bowling ball size. Each of these rocks firmly believe that they were created for the sole purpose of attempting to get you to twist an ankle or better yet break a leg.

We get back there and there is a sign pointing to a few different tubes, only none of them match the names we were looking for. We head the direction that had 2 names, after more stumbling around we come to a LARGE hole in the rocks with a cairn that looks you need to climb down in to, at this point we’re both wore out. On a good day I “might” have been able to make it down and back up, but with some of the reaches to reach down, there is no way Mary could make it down or back up. We ended up turning around and followed the cairn’s back out and more than once we questioned if we were going out the same way we came in, like I said it would be very easy to get confused and lost in that area.

Hot. Did I mention that it was getting most toasty, bright sun bouncing back off he rocks. I finished Off my 2 liters of water before the day was out.