TEXAS: LONGHORN CAVERN

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

One of the things I enjoyed about this particular trip to Texas was seeing the evidence of work done by the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, a group established during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to rebuild both the economy and the country's physical infrastructure.

One CCC project in Central Texas during the 1930s was clearing a huge underground cavern of 2.5 tons of debris and building stairs and walkways into and inside the cavern to make the cavern tourist friendly. They also built the scenic byway that led to it and facilities within the park, now known as Longhorn Cavern State Park. 

Longhorn Cavern is a limestone cave formed thousands of years ago by an underground river that no longer exists. Before the CCC turned it into a tourist attraction, it was used by indigenous people, Confederate soldiers, outlaws, and speakeasy operators.

We joined a group of about 20 people on a guided tour of the cave.

NORTHEASTERN CALIFORNIA: LAVA BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT

 September 6, 2020

On July 22, 2020, a thunderstorm rolled through northeastern California, and lightning strikes started several fires, including one in Lava Beds National Monument. Named the Caldwell Fire, it roared through over 83,000 acres before it was contained. The area, dense with ponderosa and lodgepole pine, had not seen fire in over 40 years.

About 70% of the park was scorched. If you do a Google image search of Lava Beds National Monument, you get photos like these that show trees and grasses growing on the perimeters of the lava beds . . .

From here

. . . and also throughout lava fields.

From here

When we turned into the park, we didn't realize what had occurred there six weeks before.