Although it was a cool night, we were warm and cozy inside our sleeping bags. When the sun rose and everything outside became warm, we decided that it is time to get up and have a morning cup of coffee. The sky was bright blue and birds were singing. Awesome morning! After breakfast, we packed everything back in the car, cleaned our campsite and drove to the Crack in the Ground. We already saw it in 2012 but Katya was too little, and couldn’t walk far enough, so we didn’t see much then.
To our surprise the parking lot was full already, so we parked on the side. After applying sunblock and changing to hiking boots we went for a stroll.
The crack appeared in the lava field when the lava cooled. In some places the walls of the created canyon are about 40 feet. And even during the hot summer you can find snow in the deep cracks in the ground.
You can go around but squeezing here is much more fun!
The walls are far from each other on that picture, but in some places they are very close
The rock has a built-in cup holder
The chair
The temperature was pretty high already. And despite all the applied sunblock, the day before I got a sunburn. Oh well, I have no choice but to walk in a jacket.
After a good stroll we decided to go and find a place for our next camp. Here was a nice spot, but the stump in the middle was smoldering for some reason.
Soon Sheriff arrived and started asking us questions, how long we were here. We said about a half of hour. So he studied the stump and said the he will call for a firefighters who will extinguish it.
While we were waiting the firefighters truck we had some food for lunch. As soon as we were done we notice a green car that was approaching us. That was a firefighters team and they started studying the stump and fireplace, then poured a lot of water there. The fireplace had a lot of still hot coals so there was thick steam when they pour water in it. One of the firefighters asked us too, how long we are in that place and what are we going to do here. Maybe he thought that it was us who played with matches in a bad game… I asked them how to check the fireplace when it is time for us to leave tomorrow. And he told us that we need to held our hand above the fire to make sure that there is no heat waves coming from there. If we feel something we need to pour water there or stir coals with the dirt or sand.
After everything was done they left and we set up our camp and made a new fire in the driest corner of the wet fireplace. Soon we had a guest – an Aunt Duck visited us!
This night we decided that girls will sleep upstairs and boys downstairs. So when sky became darker we prepared warm clothes, cleaned our campsite and went inside our tent. In the middle of the night I woke up because heard something. It seemed to me that someone walked around the tent, making some crumble noise. I was scared first but then decided that it was a raccoon. I must admit, that the pad in the tent is pretty comfortable, but slippery – the sleeping bags were sliding easily, so Katya comfortably laid athwart and left no space for me and Ira. We should do something to fix that.
In the morning we packed everything and followed the firefighter rules when checked the fireplace. And after everything was in proper condition we drove in the home direction.
It was a fun little camping during the Memorial weekend!