Camping 201

During our trip, one of the little adventures that we took was to a Lava Tube - pretty much just like a cave. I have never been in one and had no idea what to expect. I found out the day before that it gets as cold as 40 degrees in there. That's pretty darn cold since it was around 85 or 90 outside! Most of us brought sweatshirts, thank goodness!

HAHAHAHA!!! I love this picture. Who's ready to go inside a cave? Good thing he brought his headlamp with him! HAHAHA!! I love you, Nick! =)

Like my sister Niki would say in her blog: I spy Walt.

This is the entrance. I think Josh counted something like 71 stairs when he was coming back out. It was quite a hike!

How cool does this look?!? No, I wasn't smoking. That's how cold it was in the tube. You could see your own breath. It was sometimes hard to see where I was stepping with the headlamp because of my breath.




Another cool think about being down there was that it was pitch black unless you had a light on. I posed for this picture. When we were down there my mom had all of us turn our lights off. It scared Carley a little bit, so we turned the lights back on.





This picture doesn't show just how deep the tube really is.

About half way through the tube, my back was really starting to bother me because of all the walking on the rocks. Since Carley was a bit scared and my mom was cold (she's always cold!) we turned around and headed back towards the entrance. The boys kept going towards the end.

I thought this was an interesting picture - something metal about 130 feet below the surface above. We happened to be directly below the highway right here.

Can you see the entrance?
I think if you look closely you can see all 71 stairs. It's really a hike. A lot of stairs in a very small amount of space. Would I go back and do it again? In a heartbeat.

Picture opportunity! Doesn't Carley look cute with her coat on and her hood up? I was holding my mom's lantern. Something interesting that my mom pointed out to me while we were down there was that we could not hear anyone else around us. By the time we got to the entrance, 30-40 people came out after us. We couldn't hear a a thing. Crazy, huh?

First of all, I would like to point out that this is the first and only time that my dad wore a tank top during our trip. The rest of the time he was wearing long sleeved black HD shirts. Silly dad!

Niki and my dad stayed behind near the parking lot with the dogs since they were not allowed in the tube. Niki had offered to stay with them since she had been in a tube before. When she saw our pictures she said that it looked so much cooler than the tube that she had been in. I hope someday she makes it back to this one.

On day 3, Nick and I left the campground and got ourselves a shower! (we were planning on not having a shower the whole time, so this was a real bonus) At another campground, about 3 miles away, they had not only showers but they had washers and dryers! We had to pay $1.25 for 5 minutes of hot water. It was worth every second.

On our way back from the showers, this is what Nick and I got to enjoy. Isn't that just beautiful?

Brotherly love right here. Yes, Chester is cleaning Gizmo's head. They're tight. ;-)

After I clip the cats nails, I always give them some dried salmon treats that they love. Even with the treats at the end, Chester still gets pissed when I'm doing it.

He helped himself to the treats this time! Yep. Just dove in. The funny thing was that he would only get one treat at a time.

Monkey see. Monkey do. Chester is always setting a good example for Gizmo.