The Stone Monsters of Bomarzo

Late in the evening we arrived in the town of Bomarzo, a town of so many brown buildings, huddled upon a bluff overlook the Tennessee like landscape of the Tiber River. While it's possible that this small town's history may go back to the Roman era, being named as it is for the god Mars, the town's primary claim to fame comes from the 1500's and a man named Pier Francesco Orsini, whose fiefdom, this once was.

Orsini oversaw the construction of a park, filled with unusual and large sculptures, carved into existing limestone on site. Now, 500 years later, these sculptures are marked with time and rain, and moss has found a foothold on many. Despite being relatively recent in the scope of Italy's long history, the structures seem a part of the forest setting, and timeless.

Known as Parco del Mostri, the Park of the Monsters, it is located somewhat off the beaten path. Through a small visitors center and cafe, a country lane leads down past chickens and cattle to the gated entrance. Beyond the gate lies a land of slightly grotesque fantasy.

Down a short trail to the left is the toothy head of Proteus.

Back down the main path, a giant Hercules is rending Cacus in two.

Just past these are the more beautiful Pegasus, and behind it, the tortoise, the woman, and the whale.

Nearby, there is a small courtyard, with several interesting carvings. At one end, an imposing Neptune presides over a mossy but empty font.

Also near here, a wide eyed dragon fights lion and dog.

But of all the interesting statues, by far the most striking is the ogre. This massive monster's mouth and eyes gape. The mouth forms a sizable doorway, and inside, in the dark, carved from the rock, are benches and a table, as cool and comfortable, and odd a place as you can have a picnic anywhere.

Pictograph Cave

After spending the night comfortably in our car, north of Billings, Montana, we woke up with the sun and headed south into town. We stopped to get gas and breakfast at a little gas station. We then headed to the entrance of Pictograph Cave, but found we were a few minutes early, so we sat and waited for the ranger to arrive and open the gate. Meanwhile, coyotes could be heard yipping in the distance. Finally the ranger arrived, and we drove up to the parking lot. After the ranger settle himself in his trailer, he came out to take our entry fee and talk to us. I think he was a little curious why we would be there so early in the morning. When we mentioned we'd be heading to Yellowstone in the afternoon, he seemed skeptical that such a thing was possible.

The park is small, having just a simple loop trail, that leads up and past 3 shallow caves in the face of a cliff. There is a little guide book that describes what you see at various markers, as you make your way around. At this early hour, there was a herd of bunnies in the one flat area adorned with picnic tables. They were everywhere. You have never seen so many bunnies in your life. Despite the surrounding grasslands, this sloping area is still mostly scrub. There were also a lot of birds nearby, including cliff swallows, in their little mud homes, and circling hawks. The primary attraction here is the pictographs left on the wall by the former residents of the cave. After taking a leisurely walk in the early morning light, and just as other visitors were starting to arrive, we headed off for Yellowstone.

Craters of the Moon, without all that pesky space travel

The second day of our Rocky Mountain vacation was spent at Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho. The park is large, and consists of massive lava flows, and just about every mountain that can be seen on the horizon is an ancient volcano. It is aptly named, as the craters of the moon are ancient lava flows as well.

The morning was spent warming up and watching ground squirrels play in the mound of lava rock around the campgrounds. It was cold. Our first act in the park was to climb to the top of the Inferno cone, which appeared completely barren, but which had some low bushes and scrub growing on the exposed top, which was completely hidden until you topped the crest. We ran back down, and snapped a professional quality photo of our strange little rental car, a Dodge Caliber. We the drove just a bit up the road to the spatter cones, where had magma piled up around the openings in the earth.

We then drove to the tree molds area trail head, and hiked a couple miles out to see these strange impressions in the lava, where ancient trees were encapsulated by almost cool lave, in some cases leaving clear imprints of their alligator skin like bark in the rock. Along the trail were some beautiful flowers, lots more ground squirrels, and a mountain chickadee that was just as curious about us as we were about him, who came right down to us, perched not a foot away from us at face level, and looked us over while he sang us a pretty song.

After our walk, we headed to see the caves of the park. These are lava tubes, which lava continued to flow through, even as lava has hardened on the surface, forming a roof, and leaving the large, well insulated cave behind. The spiky pumice like kind of lava rock called ah-ah is an exceptionally good insulator, such that, even in late august, icicles form in the damp back reaches of the caves. We saw something similar in a place called the land of fire and ice in New Mexico: an ice "pond" at the bottom of a cave, that even the Indians had made use of. We wandered through several of these, and then found our way back to the narrow paved trail by following piles of rocks on the otherwise monotonous surface of the lava flows.

Finally, we hiked the loop trail of broken top, which is a cone that has literally split in half. Along this trail we saw some very good examples of pahoe-hoe lava (the ropey liquid looking kind) and we saw a hairy woodpecker. Finally, it was time for us to leave the park, and make a long drive to the next day's destination: Glacier National Park.

Overall, the park has the appearance of being largely featureless and monotonous, but along each trail, we discovered something different. Different formations and types rock, certainly, but also different types of plants and animals. The park is large, but it is easily adapted to a single days visit, and is well deserving of its National Park status.

CA 06: The Zoo, the Desert, and the Rabbit

On the third day of our vacation, we went to the San Diego Zoo for the first half of the day, and then we spent the evening at Joshua Tree National Park.

The San Diego Zoo is very impressive. They have every type of animal you would expect to find in a zoo, including Koala bears, an many more. Many of the animals had or were getting ready to have babies. There were gorilla, orangutan, and chimp babies. An anteater carrying its baby on its back, a young, though not new born, panda, and the flamingos were building mud. The zoos in my area definitely don't have breeding programs like this. We also visited two animal shows. The first featured a sea lion and a timber wolf, but not together! The second show had a bear cat and an Arctic wolf. We all howled until the wolf howled with us, and that is a very sad and eerie sound. My favorite exhibit was probably the chimps, who have an artificial termite mound, so we got to watch them using sticks to eat from it. We did some fast walking and managed to see most of the zoo in 6 hours.

After the zoo we left for Joshua Tree National Park, and arrived on the south side about 5pm. A short walk took us to the Cottonwood spring, where the water was trickling out from among the tall trees to disappear in the sand and rock. We then headed north through the park and stopped to see Cholla Cactus Garden. After that we went to see arch rock, which looks like an elephant. After that Jake went to see skull rock, but my feet hurt too much at this point to make the short walk to see it.

The small town where we came out of the park is called Twenty Nine Palms. There weren't many food options there, so we ordered some Papa Johns, and ate it sitting on the warm pavement in the parking lot behind the place, illuminated by an orange street lamp. It was the best Papa Johns I've had in years, as they still actually load it up with sauce. Then we headed off for the Mohave, thinking that our adventure for the day was done. Little did we know, a rabbit was waiting for us.

We planned to drive into the Mohave, and sleep in the car at a campground there, but by 11:00 pm I was too tired, and made Jake pull to the shoulder to sleep. Unfortunately, the desert is still very hot at that time, so about 12:30, we decided we couldn't sleep in the heat any longer, and decided to continue on to the campground. By this time, the nightlife was out in force. Mice and rats of various sizes scurried off the now gravel road. Jack rabbits were startled and hopped out of our path, all of them that is, except for one. This rabbit, instead of running off the road, ran down the road. So we stopped the car, thinking it would move out of the way. It stopped. We crept forward slowly, it crept forward slowly. We tried stopping and turning off the headlights, because we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere. At this point, it actually returned toward the car. I tried to scare him off the road by getting out of the car and walking down one side, but he persistently stayed in the middle of the road. We were afraid to push him to much, as we didn't want to give him a heart attack, so we finally admitted defeat. We decided to stop and try to get some sleep where we were. The bunny once again approached the car, and finally crossing right in front of the wheel, almost under it, he hopped of onto the shoulder of the road, and after 20 minutes of being delayed by this guy, we were free to go. By the time we reached the campground, temperatures had dropped down to be a little chilly, and we slept much more comfortably, until the rain woke us up in the morning

The Fiery Gizzard

One weekend in the spring of 2006 my husband and I took upon ourselves the task of hiking the Fiery Gizzard, a trail in the South Cumberland Recreation Area of Tennessee. The trail provides a 17 mile trail through varying terrain. We parked a car at each end, and, beginning at the Grundy Forest end, took an overnight hike. The trail in April was warm and pleasant, without the oppressive heat and humidity that comes May through August. We walked along the sunlit trail, frequently following a stream, as willow snow drifted lazily through the air. We discovered on this hike the need for boots in the future as we crossed large sections of pumpkin sized rocks, which resulted in sore soles and aching ankles. Crossing one such section, we startles an owl from a branch but were unable to make out what kind it was as it flew off into the forest. The rocks also put on a show, with formations called the Fruit Bowl, and Chimney Rock. Along the way we also spotted snakes and deer, and a myriad of wild flowers in bloom. Finally after a slow and lazy day of hiking, we made the steep ascent to the ridge line and pitched our tent at Raven Point. Not long after pitching our tent and putting some canned chili to heat on the camp stove (no fires are allowed in the campsite) we had a visitor. A black and white hunting dog came into camp to investigate, and demand that he be scratched. Our friend stayed with us even after we had gone to bed, curling up outside the tent door. When we awoke late in the night, due to nothing more than the shear brightness of a full moon in a dark sky, we found our friend had left us.

In the morning, we had the greater part of the trail still before us, but this section was much easier, as it was not riddled with boulder fields. This section winds primarily along the top of the ridge, across farmland the through the woods. A farmhouse is actually quite close to the Raven Point campsite, which is probably where our dog friend came from. Other than a jogger early in the morning, we had the trail mostly to ourselves. There are many overlooks and some beautiful waterfalls. The only difficult section of this trail is when it drops to cross a gorge with a small stream and tall trees in it, then steeply rises to the ridge top again. Beyond this gorge we began to run into the weekend crowds visiting Foster Falls. Finally, we had reached the other end of our journey.

This hike is well worth it, though it would be significantly easier if hiked in the opposite direction. The Fiery Gizzard is a popular trail, both in TN and the US in general. It is covers a variety of terrain, and gives a good idea of what middle Tennessee is like. Beautiful in the spring, it is also popular as a fall, and even winter trail. A+

City of Rocks, New Mexico

The City of Rocks is an interesting place. It is a "city" of monolithic rocks that form streets that wind all over the place. While it does not possess the massively tall formations of other similarly named locations, it does cover a large area. Most of the formations are about one story tall. This would be a great place to spend the whole day, exploring, bouldering, or just having a picnic.

There are some features that make this place unique. These rocks cover a considerably large area, and because there are no full size trees, some pretty interesting views can be found without having to climb too high. In addition to this, because it provides some of the only natural shelter in the area, these rocks have history.

Pioneers enjoyed its shelter, but so too, did Native Americans, and you can see evidence of their presence in round hollows in many of the rocks where grain was ground into flour. And then, there's the formation of these rocks. They represent the long eroded ejecta from a prehistoric volcano.

When we visited, we only had about an hour or so to investigate, so we didn't go too far in or explore too much, but it definitely seems like a great place to spend the whole day. Another bonus: it's free. It's definitely a fun place to visit, whether you intend to play hide and seek, war, do a little bouldering/rock climbing, or try to find the rocks that look like things.

It's value is even greater if you live in the area, as it would definitely require multiple visits to really explore it all. I give this an A.