Road Trip - 4/26/2021 to 5/1/2021 - Part Two

 Waning Gibbous Moon

Many of the locations I wanted to see in Lava Beds  were off limits while the vegetation and soil recover from last summer's fire. It's okay, that just makes me want to come back again and see them even more. I will definitely step up my feeble spelunking gear next time, though, and perhaps recruit a friend or two. 

One thing about Lava Beds is that it is so remote and as yet undeveloped that the campgrounds are unbelievably cheap. Ten dollars per night! With my Senior Pass, I get 50% off, so the price of a night there is about the same as a fancy cup of coffee in the city. The nighttime temperature was still pretty cold, but that was about to change. I think the last week of April is a great time to be there. 

The last site I visited before moving on was Petroglyph Point on the east side of the park, slightly separate from the rest of it. Petroglyph Point is a steep, buff-colored cliff face made of layers of mud and volcanic tuff. At one stage, when the climate was wetter, the cliff face was one side of an island in ancient Modoc Lake. Wave cuts and ripple marks indicate different water levels and erosional processes at the base of the cliff. 

The first humans arrived about 11,500 years ago, paddling their canoes to the island and leaving behind carvings in the soft rock after the water receded, thought to be about 4,500-2,500 years ago. This site boasts one of the most concentrated collections of petroglyphs on the continent, with more than 5,000 symbols in an area the approximate length of a football field. 

Of course, numbskulls from the last couple of hundred years have added their initials and crude approximations of male body parts here and there, so a tall fence now separates visitors from the cliff face. It's ugly, but functional, and you can still photograph the glyphs through the fence lines. I spent a good hour wandering along the rock layers, wondering what the carvings meant, and who had been there when. Great fun.

From there, it was on to Alturas, CA, which serves as the biggest little town in the region. Among other things, it is home to the Wagon Wheel Cafe (breakfast) and Rubio's Taqueria (taco and burrito specials).  I will be back (better-equipped) to check out some of the more complex caves (the truth is that Merrill Cave is rated as one of the least strenuous), see Captain Jack's Stronghold, and behold Medicine Lake, a sacred place for Pit River, Shasta, and Modoc people over the centuries.

Peace, Love, and Petroglyphs,

Jim