"Mud on the Sunroof!"

President's Day weekend 2007 was an eventful day. We met up with everyone headed to the caves, and were headed down the road a mere 30 minutes behind schedule. (I actually consider that some sort of record for a group of 15 people, most of which were under the age of 15!)

We arrived at Oak City Cave, still clean and excited to go. After making sure the beginners an kids had everything they needed, I sent everybody up the hill toward the cave. (I was still assembling my last pieces of loaner gear, had a few more attendee's than I was expecting.) Caught up with everyone, they found the cave just fine with my incredible directions. "Walk toward those three trees on the skyline, and hunt around a little if you can't see it." By pure luck the entrance was dead center between the three trees. Described the first 100 feet of the cave, sent in a couple adults at the front of the line to help the kids down the first drop. I let Jeremiah try playing tour guide, he had been through the cave the previous year. I brought up the end of the line, and explored some of the side passages I had missed previously. Once everyone was down the drop they appeared to generally form a few smaller groups and explore at their own pace. I was just there to point out the important highlights as I passed people.

Aubrey and friends took off for Provo, they were on a schedule. The rest of us ate a quick lunch. Mike Beard decided to head back with the grandkids, stopping to look for rocks along the way. I had a "new to me" Explorer that hadn't left pavement in the week that I had owned it, so we were off to the lava tubes! Max Cook from Timp Grotto, Venko Cook and JD Levitt were having a good time, and decided they were also up for a bit more adventure.

I was nervous about getting to the tubes. I had heard from a few people if the roads are wet you can't make it. And I know Rob took the muffler off his poor little car a year or two ago, so clearance is a must! We drove down the highway past some sand dunes, almost ran over someone's peacocks in the road, and finally started down the dirt roads. They were a bit wet in places to start, but a car would have been just fine. Then we started the journey up onto the lava cap. First we had to decide if we were really on the correct road, very few people had been on it during the winter and there weren't any tracks. Then we started bouncing our way across the cap. That was exciting to say the least! Jeremiah would bounce around in the back seat, then twist around to watch Max and see if they bounced any harder. Or how deep they went in the few puddles we couldn't go around. I remembered the trip being a lot more fun when I was just a passenger in someone else's vehicle... :-)

Arrived at the main tube in one piece. The first piece has a side passageway that is in total darkness. We went up it a ways, and discovered we weren't the only mammals there! We counted four or five hibernating bats. Probably more around, they were hard to see. And we didn't want to spend too much time there making noise--too early to stop hibernating for them. The kids took a minute to take a closeup look at one that was perched at eye-level, and of course a few pictures were taken. We continued down the tube to the end, finding things like steam rising from water dripping onto the warmer rocks in the sunshine. (Roughly 50-60 degree's earlier in the day, starting to cool off at that point.) The tube starts to break down more and more; leaving large skylights, bridges, and finally open canyon. It closes up into a tube at the very end before being filled with breakdown and becoming impassable.

Since we were almost exactly at the center of the lava cap, we continued driving south past the tube with a large cairn by the entrance. We figured the road south couldn't be much worse than how we came in, and we could drop off the southeast edge of the lava cap and catch the graded roads back to pavement to form a loop. Took some pictures as the sun was setting by the cairn tube. Startled a large owl out of the tube itself. And decided to get off the cap before it was full dark. So we bounced our way down the last quarter mile, and sighed in relief as we pulled onto the flat. Things were a little wetter here, but we weren't having any problems and the main road was just a couple hundred yards away. Lee made a comment about how ironic it would be if we were to get off that horrible road and then get stuck just short of the maintained road. Oh, the pain of prophetic statements!

As I came up to the main road we were definitely in twilight. As I started to turn left and pull down into the slightly lower roadbed, I noticed something didn't look right. At that point I was too worn down from the full day to put all the details together quickly enough. There were small snowdrifts in the shadows along the edges of the road. The road itself was lower than surrounding land due to the graders leveling things. And it had been warm enough to melt the snow during the day. Lee started to make a comment moments before I felt the Explorer start to spin a little and lose momentum. It dawned on me that I was pulling into a beatifully smooth surface of clay and mud about 15 seconds too late. Maybe thirty feet down the "good" road I was sunk to my rims and spinning my tires, even in 4 wheel drive. Max had been a bit behind, and saw we weren't moving as he approached. We got out the tow straps, and I was pulled back up onto the wet, but drivable, sideroad. Later I realized this was the only time in my driving career I had ever needed someone else to pull my vehicle out of anything. (I have spent my fair share of time getting cars through rough dirt roads)

We quickly determined our "good" road to freedom wasn't going to work at all. So the caving trip ended with an extra hour of bouncing back across the rough lava cap at a blistering 5-10 miles per hour. We had to backtrack to the road we came in on that had a little more gravel in it. For those who have never driven across a lava cap in the dark, I don't recommend it! Turns out black rocks are tough to see after dark... :-)

Luckily Max had decided to come with and see the tubes, otherwise it would have been a long, cold night waiting for the mud to freeze so we could get back up onto the side road. When I observed that the mud on the windshield was irritating and made it tough to see the road as I recrossed the lava flow, Jeremiah pointed out I had mud on the sunroof! Little lumps of half frozen mud were scattered all across the front half of my vehicle. After getting off the lava cap in the dark, the rest of the drive home was calm and completely uneventful.