As a Christmas present, I gave Jason a day of rockhounding for fish fossils at American Fossil near Kemmerer, Wyoming. I know, pretty fishy. We took this trip in July of last summer. During it, our main destination, American Fossil, wasn’t our only connection to the past. At Fossil Butte National Monument, we connected our brains and feet instead of our hands, which will be covered next time. For this portion of the post, let’s dig into American Fossil.

American Fossil is a privately-owned quarry located where the depths of Fossil Lake existed for 2.5 million years some 52 million years ago. The remains unearthed there come from life found in and around that lake, and a lot of those remains remain. Over a million fossils have been excavated from the greater area, the majority uncovered in perfect condition.

Why did so many fossils survive at Fossil Lake? It is believed that Fossil Lake had a layer of saltine water beneath its fresh water. The deeper parts of the lake may also have contained poisonous hydrogen sulfide. These factors would have prevented scavengers from consuming the carcasses of animals that fell to the lake floor, giving them a much better chance of being preserved.

The elevation at American Fossil’s quarry is around 7,000 feet. So, even in the middle of July, temperatures are doable but not necessarily pleasant. The high was 82 degrees the day we visited, which was a whole lot nicer than the 97 degrees back home. However, with heat reflecting off rocks, a sunny and still 82 isn’t as nice as it sounds. The quarry staff said it was the hottest day they’d had all summer; they retreated to the shade while the stalwart fish seekers carried on with their hammering.

We arrived at the quarry around 11:00 and pounded rocks until 4:45, nearly six hours. We found loads of fish, and we got sunburned, cut, covered in limestone dust, dehydrated, sore, overheated, and exhausted. All worthy sacrifices in the name of rocks!

Speaking of wordy sacrifices, I have plenty of advice for those heading to American Fossil, so let’s begin. First, the Google map is wrong. Do not use it. Instead, only use the directions given to you by American Fossil via their website or reservation confirmation emails.

If you are one of those people who meticulously calculates how many pairs of clothes they will need on a trip, please note you will not be able to re-wear anything you don while digging for fossils. In fact, your attire will be so dusty from those endeavors that you will likely need to put it in a plastic bag afterward to keep it from contaminating all the contents of your suitcase.

Also, fish fossils are delicate, and the limestone they are in breaks easily. Be careful how you transport your treasures back home. We had some crack. I’d recommend bringing bubble wrap or purchasing it at the Ace Hardware store in Kemmerer.

And one final note to the hungry, Kemmerer is a small town. It has a handful of good places to eat, but they close early and don’t open at all on some days of the week. So, the food situation is a little spotty. We found Pizza Hut the most reliable source of meals. On an inconsequential sidenote, the residents of Kemmerer are super friendly. They are also super proud of their world’s-first JCPenney. Unfortunately, the world’s-first JCPenney will not improve your stomach’s predicament.

Next time, I will finish the recount of our fossil quest by unearthing some advice about Fossil Butte National Monument.

We began the next day with a stop at Tule Lake National Monument. Tule Lake Relocation Center had the highest peak population of the 10 centers run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. Although Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho is much more extensive in both the information it provides and the remaining buildings you can visit, we still enjoyed the exhibits at Tule Lake and spent over an hour there. Sadly, we missed the days’ sole ranger-led jailhouse tour, currently the only way to see the center’s jailhouse, one of its few WRA buildings still standing.

Following our visit to Tule Lake National Monument, we headed to the Tule Lake portion of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges. There, we hiked a half-mile round-trip up the Sheepy Ridge Trail to a lookout built by the CCC. From that 170-foot vantage point, we could fully appreciate the expanse that was once Tule Lake. It is only 25% of its original size today. What happened to the lake? It fell victim to rash ideas that seemed prudent. In 1905, the lake’s extensive wetlands, which once attracted six million waterfowl each fall, were drained in order to be converted to fertile farmland. The Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges were established in 1928 in an “oops” moment when the detrimental impact of that previous decision began to be realized.

After Sheepy Ridge, we wandered down the one-mile Discovery Marsh Trail, which winds through an experiment to reclaim reclaimed farmland for the birds. It was peaceful, except for all those dang birds. (LOL!)

Following our second walk, we downloaded the refuge’s free auto tour guide and went on a drive. During this journey, we saw a golden eagle, prairie falcons, white pelicans, western grebes, cliff swallows, and a whole slew of ducks and other shorebirds. The auto tour was great except it didn’t seem to have been updated since 2009, so some of the info was obsolete. Also, it suggested trails in route that had not been maintained in a while. For instance, one such path was supposed to cross over a wetland area on a bridge yet all that remained of that bridge was a couple burnt boards as it had been engulfed in a fire back in 2020.

The auto tour ended at Petroglyph Point where we walked 0.8 miles appreciating its chirpy and artsy ambiance. There, on what had once been an island surrounded by Tule Lake, indigenous people carved over 5,000 symbols into soft volcanic rock between 2,500 and 4,500 years ago. (Exact dates are not known.) Petroglyph Point is now home to an enormous number of birds ranging from owls and falcons to swallows. For the winged, it is a happening place!

Our last day in Oregon, we finally made it to our primary destination, Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and the ninth deepest lake in the world at 1,943 feet, and it holds the world record for water clarity down to 143 feet. It owes its exceptional transparency and hue to its depth and to the fact that it does not have any streams that flow into it. All of its five trillion gallons of water have accumulated slowly from rain and snowmelt. While I understood that Crater Lake is an unusual azure color, looking at it for the first time, I still had a wow moment. Wow is it blue!

How did it form in the first place? The short of it is that a volcano (Mt. Mazama) had a cataclysmic eruption 7,7000 years ago and emptied so much magma from beneath its surface that its hollowed magma chamber collapsed leaving behind a massive crater with no outlet that gradually filled with water.

This unspoiled lake typically receives between 500,000 and 700,000 tourists every year, which kind of spoils it. Apparently, it’s had lower than average visitors the last few years; it didn’t feel like that. We had to wait half an hour to get through the entrance booth, and it was a Monday. There were also quite a few people at the Rim Village when we first arrived, but they thinned out over the next hour or two. I guess everyone got their Instagram photo and moved on.

Much of the park was not open yet due to lingering snow. Visitors were only allowed at the Rim Village and a mile down the road to Discovery Point. Since only a couple trails were even options, it wasn’t hard to pick the Discovery Point Trail (2.1 miles) for a hike. This path goes along the rim of the lake with thrilling scenery that changes around every corner and continually challenges any height misgivings. That brings me to this note: Crater Lake is circled by cliffs nearly 2,000 feet high. Exposure to them is unavoidable, so it may not be the best choice of parks for those with height aversions.

While the chance of rain that day was just 16%, and there had barely been a puff in the sky, just as we were reaching Discovery Point, we noticed some questionable clouds overhead. We miraculously got enough cell service to check the weather again and found the risk of rain had gone up to 47%. We decided we’d better hurry back as we were not in a great place to avoid lightning. As we were returning along the rim, we noticed a wall of precipitation charging across the lake toward us, and it didn’t look benevolent. Jason and I can move fast when prompted and that definitely prompted us. We made it back to our car just minutes before it started hailing, lightning, and a severe weather warning was issued. Thus ended our brief excursions at Crater Lake. The hail, rain, and sleet did not end though; we traveled through it for a large share of our return drive. Surprisingly, it was sunny back at Klamath Falls, and we got in a pleasant 4-mile run at our resort that evening.

Crater Lake is a reflective expanse of striking cobalt that will make you feel like you’ve stepped into a Photoshopped image, but the thrill of adventuring in Lava Beds combined with its lack of visitors kept it on the top of our favorites list. Sometimes obscurity generates more contentment than a pleasing scene.

One final note on wetness and awayness. Between CO, CA, OR, and UT, by the end of our Oregon outing, Jason and I had been gone 14 of the last 20 days. (And Jason had to go on an additional work trip to CA while we were “home.”) Out of those 14 traveling days, it had rained on us 11, and all but one of the sparse dry spells fell on days we were driving or flying home. We trekked in many downpours and got hailed on repeatedly. It was a strange season of sogginess, splendor, death, and discovery, a true ode to this beautiful, messy, incredible, hectic, heartbreaking, wondrous, complicated life.

Death doesn’t heed timelines or care about your plans. For the second time in about half a decade, we had a nonrefundable vacation uprooted by a close family death in June of 2023. While a trip is inconsequential compared to a loss, the odds of this happening twice are baffling. After a tiring day of funeral-related socializing and public speaking, neither of us had any desire to pack or travel to Oregon, but just a few hours after we arrived at our destination, a particularly exquisite sunset changed our attitudes. Here’s the details on that sunset and the captivating darkness that followed.

Crater Lake National Park, a destination we’d never been to, was the reason we planned this ill-timed outing. We used Klamath Falls, which is about 45 minutes from the park, as our base. Unexpectedly, some nearby “filler” attraction surpassed Crater Lake on our list of favorites. How can that be? Read on, and you shall see.

Sandwiched between dormant volcanoes and calderas in the crest of the Cascade Mountains sits the High Lakes, a series of scenic lagoons dotting swaths of charming forest. The first thing we did after arriving in Klamath Falls was hike five miles amongst those High Lakes. We skirted the shores of the Great Meadow, 500 acres that flood seasonally when Lake of the Woods overflows, to Lake of the Woods. Lake of the woods is a popular body of water for canoeing, fishing, and swimming. We saw evidence of its popularity as we passed campgrounds but little in way of people on the trail.

Looming in the skyline during this hike was the symmetrical face of Mt. McLoughlin, a 9,495-foot stratovolcano. Mt. McLoughlin began erupting 200,000 years ago. Nearby sits its much younger volcano brother, Brown Mountain. These volcanoes, particularly Mt. McLoughlin, made the setting magical as the setting sun turned the Great Meadow into a fiery mirror. Somewhere in those moments, our outlook changed from emotional and physical exhaustion to wonder and curiosity. Nature will do that to you.

The next day, we crossed the California border to visit Lava Beds National Monument. Why Lava Beds? I read a bit in a book about Crater Lake to prepare for this trip, and it mentioned Lava Beds National Monument as another spot you could visit close by. Although we had no idea what Lava Beds consisted of, we were game for finding out. Lava Beds turned out to be an amazing place, far more interesting and adventurous than expected.

Lava Beds contains the highest concentration of lava caves in the continental United States owing largely to its location on the Medicine Lake Volcano, a massive shield volcano. Over 400 caves have been named in the monument. Two hundred of these have been explored to some extent, and about 100 have been mapped out. Visitors are free to explore 21 of the mapped caverns. Although the number of caves in Lava Beds is impressive, the best thing about them is what’s underfoot.

In the 1920s and 30s, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) made considerable improvements to a number of the caves in the monument. How does one improve a lava cave? If you’ve ever hiked through one before, you will no doubt recall it as a rough experience with a lot of painful boulder scrambling. They typically are littered with chunks of sharp volcanic rock that has fallen from their ceilings. At Lava Beds, thousands of tons of stone were removed from tunnels either by hand or block and tackle systems using the light of gasoline lanterns. Openings were also expanded in some cases to allow for easier access.

What remains when rock debris is taken from a lava cave? It turns out, a whole heck of a lot. Stalactites, ribbed walls, benches, shelves, and flow lines all become visible. We also found shimmering veins of gold and silver created by colonies of actinomycete bacteria. So cool!

Before we proceeded down at Lava Beds, we went up. The Schonchin Butte Trail leads 0.7 miles up a 500-foot cinder cone to a lookout created by the CCC for fire surveillance. Although this hike is a steady climb and not particularly shaded, it isn’t too difficult. That day, the cone’s hillside was a contrasting canvas of lavender and canary-colored grasses and flowers.

Our first cave at Lava Beds was Mushpot. Mushpot is 770 feet long but is easily accessed as it’s paved and lighted for its entire extent. Rangers recommend visiting this cave first as an intro to the system. It contains a fireplace once used by a bootlegger and the stony remnants of lava splatter but is otherwise fairly dull compared to other tubes. However, its many signs provide ample information on the monument’s caves that comes in handy as you continue to explore.

Following Mushpot, we checked out Sunshine. Sunshine Cave includes a skylight, a residual opening to the surface that was there when lava was flowing in the tube. This skylight supplies illumination to sections of the cave, so some diehard cavers might complain about it making the cave less… well, dark. Yet, we found the opening fascinating and fun. This was our favorite cave of the day.

At 1,635 feet, Valentine was the longest cave we explored. Valentine felt much grander than Sunshine with large columns and expansive rooms. It also felt tiny in places, which is why I eventually decided to turn around not far from the end.

Skull Cave, the last cavern we entered, has a huge 60-foot opening coated with course chunks of stones. This massive entrance is just one of the cave’s three levels. Its bottom level contains the Ice Chamber, an extensive slab of perennial ice of unknown depth. This ice is what the bighorns, mountain goats, antelopes, and two humans, whose remains were found in the cave upon its discovery, were seeking when they perished. And yes, that is why it is named Skull Cave. The water in the lower levels of the cave is kept cool enough to remain frozen because cold air sinks and hot air rises. Meaning, the cold air in the lower sections is only warm enough to rise when temperatures outside are even colder. Hence, this is a chilly cave!

Lava Beds deserves to be more than just a resting stop on the route between Crater Lake and Lassen. It is unlike any other cave system we’ve been to with floors of petrified volcanic flow ranging from rigid cauliflower to ropey waves. It was the highlight of our vacation, particularly because it wasn’t crowded. For the inquisitive and adventurous, Lava Beds is an unbelievable place.

Now that I have covered our surprise favorite, I will next turn my attention to the attraction that prompted us to Oregon in the first place, Crater Lake National Park.