After we left Lassen, it was a short drive to McArthur-Burney State Park. Burney Falls is a huge, amazing and lovely waterfall.
We stopped on the way to check out Subway Cave.
The cave is a large lava tube.
Alicia and Alex check out one of the cave's features.
Alicia, Marissa and Alex pose by the top overlook of Burney Falls.
One hundred million gallons of water a day pour over and out of the volcanic rock layers.
The air temperature near the falls is kept to around 65F by evaporation. Away from the falls it was more like 90F!
We hiked out to the old Burney Pioneer Cemetery and also went down to Lake Britton.
From Burney Falls we headed to Lava Beds National Monument. Lava Beds was a real undiscovered gem. There are over 400 lava tube caves in the park to explore. We did two days of spelunking through most of the easily accessible caves. We stopped at the Visitor Center and then drove up the Cave Loop road a ways to the first cave entrance. The first cave we went into we had to crawl through a couple of tight spaces until it eventually opened up again. We popped back up right outside of the Visitor Center!
The entrance to the Catacombs Lava Cave. Lots of ways to get lost in this one.
There are many sections where the lava tubes have collapsed.
The ceilings in the lava caves were covered with lavasicles. Very hard and sharp. That's why we were wearing bike helmets.
Many of the lava tube caves got pretty tight in spots, but most places were easy walking.
An occasional skylight would appear in the caves.
We had to squeeze through some tight exits.
Inside the Chocolate Cave the ceiling looked like liquid chocolate.