Desert Destination: A Marshmallow Cave

Over the weekend I went on a fun adventure to a cave. Full disclaimer: I love caves. I go in a cave whenever I can. Usually the caves involve lots of mud and/or lots of crawling. To my great surprise, this cave didn't involve either.

That little hole way up on the mountainside is Goshute Cave, but it's more fun to call it Marshmallow Cave because much of the interior is filled with giant white mammilaries that look like marshmallows! You'll see in a minute.

The trip was sponsored by the Northern Nevada Grotto. Grottoes are caving clubs, and they're located all over the country. They are part of the National Speleological Society, which has lots of great information about caves. One of the best parts about the Northern Nevada Grotto is that it has no dues. And it meets online. So all in all, it's a rather convenient organization to be a part of. The downside is that to actually see other members, you have to turn off the TV, get off the couch, and go somewhere. It worked out that I could go on this trip at the last minute because my wonderful hubby agreed to come along and watch Desert Boy. Desert Boy doesn't love caves, at least not yet, and my hubby can't get very excited about crawling so he didn't mind skipping the cave. 

Here's a view from the trail up to the cave. (It was a steep trail, so I had to do something while I was gasping for air.) You can see the Great Basin desert stretching out into the smoke-filled hazy horizon. The California wildfires are definitely having an impact on much more than California.
Here's the rock scramble below the entrance. Actually the entrance is a smaller hole to the left of the big, gaping one, but you can't see it until you're up there.
In case I didn't know where I was. Rooms throughout the cave had been named, apparently by a group back in 1912.
Here are those marshmallows I was talking about! These are mammillaries, which formed under water. Although they look sort of soft, they are hard calcite.
In some places the mammilaries have been eroded away, showing rings. These indicate that the mammilaries formed one layer of calcite at a time.
Another white, intriguing formation was the folia, layer upon layer of honeycomb looking calcite.
This is a closeup of the folia, where you can see that the layers aren't quite parallel. One suggestion as to their formation is that bubbles created the slightly sloping edges.
The main cave passage descended steeply, and we had to slide down some sections.
The proper caving gear of helmet, headlamps, sturdy clothing and boots, and kneepads, made the caving trip much more enjoyable and safe.
These aragonite crystals were tucked away in a little alcove. It is amazing to see such a delicate-looking formation and marvel how it has survived for thousands of years.
Here is a cave shield, a fairly rare speleothem. Its color contrasted with the wall behind it, suggesting that the water percolating into the cave to form the shield is picking up minerals along the way.
We climbed into an upper passage to go down a tight little hole called The Toilet Bowl. It is so small that your whole body completely fills the hole, and you can't see where you're going.
Eventually even your head disappears, and you are flushed into another part of the cave. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
These colorful draperies were part of the attraction of the cave. I was impressed with the diversity of formations and the large walking passages. The entire group seemed to enjoy the cave trip.
After reading this post, you're either ready to head down into the nearest hole or you're saying that cavers are a weird group of people, for who in their right mind would want to descend into the bowels of the earth? If you're in that second group, this photo helps explain why it's great to go into a cave. When you see a weird formation like this helictite, which grew upward and curving in spite of gravity, you realize that caves are one of the last frontiers, where we don't understand exactly how they formed and don't know what their bounds are. It might just be possible that you're sitting on top of a cave right now! 

Henry Finds a Treasure

Henry loves going out on runs and walks because he can explore the smells of the neighborhood. We go out everyday, and yesterday Henry found gold. Okay, it wasn't real gold, but to him it was probably even better than the doggy equivalent of gold.
He found a deer leg, including the hoof. And he decided to bring it home. Oh, lucky me. It seems normal for dogs to chew on things, but that hoof just gets me. Why is that part so attractive to a dog?
Henry doesn't waste any time getting down to business. He's chewing away.
But he senses that I'm close, and puts a protective paw over that deer hoof. After all, I might want to steal away his treasure. 

Desert Boy Rides a Horse

It's summertime, which means it's time to move the cows around different meadows and pastures as the feed allows. Aunt Tana helps move the cattle, and we saw her yesterday on her beautiful horse Jewel. She offered to take Desert Boy  for a ride.
Here's Aunt Tana with her dogs, Heidi and Tippy. They don't get along well with Henry. I think they sense that he's just a play dog and they know that they are work dogs, able to do important things like getting cattle to go where they want.
Aunt Tana starts by giving Desert Boy a lesson. She's an excellent rider, unlike me. In my dreams I'm an excellent rider, but in reality I get fairly nervous if we go faster than a walk.
Desert Boy quickly catches on and sows no fear being on top of the big horse by himself.
Desert Boy sees the cattle coming. Aunt Tana had ridden ahead to open the gate so they could come through. The horse has miraculously sprouted two more legs in this photo.
Desert Boy gets ready for the action.
He reaches for the other rein. He doesn't have much time to act, there's a storm coming in.
He's got the reins now and is ready to go. Maybe next time we'll put some shoes on him.
And there they are, a bunch of cattle in the background. They're moving in the right direction and all is well with the world.
Mission accomplished, Desert Boy scans the horizon, looking for his next task.

Don't Try This

If you've been following this blog, you know that you should not go hiking with my brother. This video will show you why. Uncle Andrew hiked in the summer heat down the Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point at the Grand Canyon. 

He had previously done a down to the river and back to the rim trip, so had "been there done that." (And it wasn't even too hard for him.) So this time around he wanted to show people what the trail was like. Instead of taking a video camera, he took a photo every 4 or 5 steps down the 6-mile long trail, which ends at a beautiful scenic area overlooking the river. 

For you purists who say that the Grand Canyon isn't in one of the four North American deserts, you're right, the rim is in the Colorado Plateau. But watch the vegetation change and become more desert-like as Uncle Andrew descends 3,000 feet from the rim into 115 degrees Fahrenheit in about 3 minutes. It might make you a little dizzy, but at least you can stay cool.


So where should Uncle Andrew go hiking next and would you like to go with him?

Learning to Drive

Learning  to drive is always a rite of passage. For me, it was a terrifying experience when I was 15 years old and in driver's ed class. The instructor figured everyone had already driven, so he put me on the street and said go, not bothering to find out that I had never even sat behind the wheel of a parked car. After nearly sideswiping a whole line of cars and making him so nervous that his face was wet with perspiration, he decided maybe we needed to learn in an empty parking lot. I couldn't have agreed more. 

When it came time to take my driving ed test with him, he flunked me before I even took the test. But I could perform in a high stress situation and passed with flying colors (well, he only had to use the instructor brake once). So he had to unflunk me and then I got to terrify my parents as I put in my hours before I could get a license to drive on my own.

Out in the desert, learning to drive is a little easier. There aren't the inconveniences of parked cars. And there are plenty of roads. And living on a ranch, young'uns are encouraged to drive at an early age so they can help move the tractor to the other side of the field. My husband learned to drive when he was five. That does seem like a very early age, but he had his older brother to help him. His older brother was six. 

Last week the California cousins came for a visit, and my sister-in-law decided that it was time for her oldest daughter to learn how to drive. She got behind the wheel of her cousin's work truck and before long was driving it, only slightly scaring her mother. It was a stick shift, which really impressed me, because that took me forever to learn how to drive. 

Desert Boy didn't want to be left out of the fun. Here he is practicing with his Pony Express Rider cousin (update on the ride coming soon). His cousin is laughing because Desert Boy already knows he needs to shift. While he's "driving" he makes vroom, vroom noises.

And now that we get a wider view, you can see he is ready to live it up, taking his cute California cousins for a ride. I'm already sweating the real driving!

What do you remember from your first driving experience?