July 5th began with our neighborhood's traditional firework cleanup. Our kids were great sports about waking up early and picking up all the bits of cardboard and plaster leftover from the fireworks show the night before.
Monday afternoon we went rafting with the Prices. All the teenagers rode in one raft, While Angel, Greg and their two daughters rode in a raft with Brandan and Becky.
We called the other raft the Pirates of the Rogue River. From the left are Abe, Gibson, Zaya, Scott, Jason, Helen and Sam.
By happy coincidence, we met our friends, Emily and Aaron, rafting with their family. Emily shared this great photo taken as they attacked the pirate raft with water guns.
It's time for Gibson to move up to a full sized cello. Bellwood, the local luthier, always feels a little mysterious and magical with instruments stashed in every nook and cranny and interesting projects in progress in the workroom. Gib found a beautiful cello with great sound to take home and try out.
At Craterworks, he finished a prototype shield for a middle school teacher who is teaching a unit on the Middle Ages and wanted to build some weapons.
Siskiyou Violins performed its first concert since the pandemic began. It was a beautiful night to sit in a warm breeze and listen to the lilting music. We were surprised to see Dr. Alexander Tutanov, a renowned performer and professor, accompanying the ensemble. While accompanying a student group is unusual for a pianist of his caliber, he cheerfully helped his friend, Faina, the director of Siskiyou Violins.
This is a photo of the radiant Faina with Helen. Faina is endlessly optimistic, warm and loving while demanding near perfection from her students. Since temperatures were near 100 degrees, the group performed in T-shirts and shorts instead of their usual formal wear.
We spent Saturday exploring the lava tubes in Lava Bed National Monument, about a 2 hour drive from home, just over the border in California. The tubes were formed by the gentle eruptions of the nearby Medicine Lake shield volcano that resulted in massive lava flows. As the lava cooled, the center of the streams of lava stayed hot whole the outside cooled. The hot lava drained out of the cool lava, leaving a hollow tube. Today there are over 700 lava tubes in the monument that formed over a period of several thousand years. We explored 7 of the caves. Our first one was Mushpot, a well-lit and paved cave near the visitors center designed as an introduction to caving.
Mushpot was very interesting, but we were ready for more adventure. Next we explored the Golden Dome cave. This is the steep entrance to the cave.
The color of the cave comes from light reflecting off water droplets that bead up on the hydrophobic bacteria that line the cave. The bacteria can glisten or glitter when the light hits it right. Besides headlamps, we each wore a bike helmet or a hardhat to protect our heads from the roof of the cave. Some places we needed to crawl on our hands and feet to get through. The ground was too rough to make crawling on our knees comfortable.
This natural bridge is the remnant of a collapsed lava tube.
This divided tunnel is located to the Hopkins Chocolate Cave. In many of the caves we turned off our lights to experience the complete blackness.
This is the beginning of Skull Cave, the tallest cave we visited. We descended 5 flights of stairs to the bottom of this cave which had pockets of ice. The hot air rises to the top of the cave, trapping cold air underneath. The cold air was very refreshing on a hot, smoky day. This cave was named for the animal and human remains early explorers found here. The park rangers left one bighorn sheep skull in place.
It's hard to imagine living in this dry and desolate area, but the last Native Americans were forcibly removed in the 1870s. We hiked along a very dusty trail to the Big Painted and Symbol Bridge Caves to see pictographs made by native Americans hundreds or maybe even thousands of years ago.
The drawings blend in with the rock. Both of these caves are large and filled with light.
The meaning of these drawings is lost to time, yet the stick figures and squiggly lines feel familiar.
Abe made homemade waffle cut fries after church today. Maybe he is missing Chick-fil-A?
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