Here we are now going to the south side...

I headed out with a purpose: to see what Klamath Falls, Crater Lake and some other southern Oregon towns were all about. Turns out, not much. That's not a complaint. It was nice to take a break from multi-everythinging everything and just be.

Crater Lake is pretty, for sure:


And they have a nice gift shop, and they keep the road plowed to the lake's rim in the winter, and the post office at the visitor center closes at 2pm. That's about all I can say about Crater Lake. But I hear it's lovely in the summer.

Earlier that weekend I headed a bit farther south on my way to Lava Beds National Monument and ran across this sign...

... and I got a little nostalgic. I then bought a couple of postcards and got charged sales tax, and the nostalgia went away. (I suppose if I'd pumped my own gas I could've brought it back?)

I did have a lot of fun in the caves. The others I've visited (Sacramento, South Dakota, Colorado) required guided tours. Here I showed up around noon and asked the gal at the front desk what she recommended. She sent me off with two flashlights and a map. Because it's winter there, the park was empty... and as a result the whole experience was pretty amazing.

Most of the caves are upright-walkable. Some you have to crouch in places, and a few require crawling. I didn't do the crawling ones out of respect for my knees (and my closet claustrophobia), but I definitely got deep underground in a few.

(Golden Dome)

In one of the first caves I explored, about 200 feet in I turned off the flashlight and stood in the dark listening. Outside, the wind was loud and gusting and the temperature was around 25 degrees. Inside the cave it was a balmy 55, slightly humid and... absolutely silent.

It was amazing.

After a few minutes of silence I was reminded of recent mountain lion attacks in the area and I freaked out a little. "Surely they wouldn't just let people wander around solo if mountain lions were in the area. Surely. Right? I mean, this is a national monument, after all."

And then 25 years of pop culture kicked in. I saw a flash of the Indiana Jones scene where the water comes gushing through the tunnel, and I freaked out a little more and turned the flashlight back on. And then I saw flashes from The Lost Boys and I jerked the flashlight up to make sure no vamps or bats were lounging over my head. And then I remembered the cave scenes from The Goonies, which I'd watched on fuzzy cable the night before... And then two dozen scenes from Buffy ran through my head, and then...

And then I laughed at myself, appreciated the adrenaline rush, and moved on to the next cave. (And? That night on fuzzy cable? The Lost Boys! How serendipitously odd.)