After a long chat with one of the rangers about the bats, he also highly recommended the viewpoint at the sandstone bluffs. So, of course…we drove down there. Detailed maps of the park and any info you could want are freely provided at the visitors’ centers.
One of the short trails partway down the road is a viewpoint for a massive sandstone arch, carved out of the cliff by hundreds of years of wind.
It was a day for slow paced walking and many extra bottles of water, but a worthwhile stop.
The downside of stopping is always the lack of shade…..even for this short stop the truck interior (black of course….!!) would become stickily hot.
Onward to the bluffs….
Most of the elevation gain is the drive up there….which is fortunate considering the heat and lack of shade. At the top was the ranger we spoke to earlier, chatting and answering questions, we were most envious of his office. I’m not sure the pictures convey the scale, the height of the bluffs or the vastness of the valley…….spectacular…!!!
An impossilbly beautiful high viewpoint that lays out the whole valley floor in full panorama….and likely a point where anyone who lived here 3,000 years ago may well have watched that magma oozing out of the ground as it happened.
There are rock pools dotted around the top (we had watched the National Park video in the visitor centre so we knew to look for them..!!) There are populations of tadpoles and ghost shrimp…incredible place to find these tiny swimmers….
Yes…that is a shrimp in the middle of that picture……
We had a wander around in this magnificent landscape…..
There are always the reminders of the recent usage of this terrain.
A quick stop was made on the way back down b/c we spotted this little derelict building (what is a route 66 post without a little dereliction…LOL)
Time for another (small) hike although trying not to be too ambitious as general temp was high….but the black basalt rock makes it even hotter when you are out there.
The Lava Falls Walk is part of an ancient route the indigenous population used to cross the lava fields. For more modern hiking/walking this part is marked with small cairns, although still very easy to become disoriented in these surroundings. Only admiring the surroundings once stationary, gazing at the landscape while trekking across it, well that way lies disaster as you can see from the photos.
….and as the sign suggests…you really don’t want to fall…..this stuff will shred your hands, knees and boompsadaisy…….!!!
What a fascinating place to be……you can clearly see all of the bubbles, swirls and oozing stuff, now frozen in time.
Here’s me for scale again…..
We were stepping carefully over cracks in the earth…..and staring in wonder at the life clinging on in such a harsh place.
There were a couple of spots where we lost the line of cairns and had to backtrack a little…….and amazing how quickly one can become completely disoriented…..( I was also following Alltrails..!!)
The contrast between the sandstone bluffs and the lava fields below is mind-blowingly stark. Such an ancient, untouched landscape……another place where you can really get a sense of how it looked hundreds of years ago…….fabulous place…..
Extra Pix.
OsteoPraxis on the road 