May, 2022
Nope, we didn’t see any red hot lava on this trip, but we sure saw lots of lava rocks and lava columns that were super red hot millions of years ago. Red hot lava pouring up through the earth and covering the earth.
A different friend of mine (not the friend I was camping with on this trip) taught me about basalt (lava) columns just 3 or 4 years ago. Since then, I’ve been fascinated by them, and I see them all sorts of places where I hadn’t noticed them before. But here, in the Potholes area, lava columns are everywhere! And there are at least three different types (or shapes), or maybe they are older and newer, or they cooled differently, etc. They’re fascinating.
Let me start with a few photos that my camping friend and I took on this camping trip, and then I’ll post some videos that I found online that do a whole lot better job of describing all of this to you than I can. So … here are a few photos of lava columns from our trip … out of hundreds of photos taken over the five days we were here. These columns are everywhere!
And these columns and rocks are tens of thousands, and sometimes millions, of years old.
How many faces do you see in the lava rock in the photo above? I see eight. One of those faces is an elephant, and another is a puma or a cougar.
While driving along the South Morgan Lake Road, we spotted these lava tubes by the side of the road. They were obviously set up as an educational exhibit. We pulled into the parking lot on the right, and walked across the road to check this out.
Turns out these lava tubes had been found on private property, someone’s home, where they were being used to build a deck. In 1999, these tubes were removed from that property and brought back here. The tubes had been taken illegally from a lava tube wall to use at a private home. They were brought here and positioned next to each other as they had been at the wall, so it would be easy for lots of folks to see them up close.
The tubes are 16-18 feet tall. It’s hard to tell how tall something is when you’re only 5’8″ tall. The diameter of the ones on the ground was about 1.5 to 2 feet. They are a lot larger and taller than they look in these photos. Solid lava. 15 million years old.
It’s hard to imagine, but I try to think about lava that would cover hundreds and thousands of miles of land … and cover the land so the lava was many miles deep too. What a thing that would have been to see.
The photo below is of red hot lava flowing on the island of Hawaii. I don’t know the size of the flow in the photo below, but I do know I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near it.
The photo above was used on a sign at this lava tube exhibit simply to show how lava flows. But the sign also says that the lava here in Potholes took only two weeks to reach the Pacific Ocean … about 420 miles away via what would become the Columbia River. So … two weeks and 420 miles. That’s 210 miles/week, or 30 miles/day, or 6,600 feet/hour, or about 2 feet per second … on the average. But then consider that a flow of lava stops and starts, stops and starts, over and over … so when the lava WAS flowing, it might have been moving at 5 or 6 feet per second. And that’s not even counting the WIDTH of this lava flow, and the number of lava flows here over millenia. Makes my brain melt.
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Now for the videos. There are lots of videos online about the Potholes area here in Washington. Here are four of my favorites that talk about the lava.
The fellow in the video below talks really fast and sometimes not very clearly. But listen to him. What he has to say about the ice and the water and the flood from the ice dam breaking is stupendous. It’s exactly why Potholes is here, and exactly why these lava tubes can be seen today, otherwise they would still be underground. On the other hand, the fellow in the video below says two or three times that this land is barren … it is not!
In the video beow, look in the background for the lava tubes all over this area. At time mark 6:58, look at those huge lava tubes! The video below is almost 30 minutes long so if you don’t want to watch a video that long, then that’s ok. But it’s a great video. I’m thinking that probably every piece of rock here is lava rock, whether in tubes or weathered away into smaller chunks. 15 millions years can do that, yes!
Amazing. I didn’t have a clue about this stuff before this trip. I thought we would be seeing migrating birds and other wonderful wildlife things like that … and we did … birds are coming up in the next blog post. But I was amazed by the geology here and will absolutely return to spend more time exploring this land that is millions of years old.
This is fascinating. I remember seeing lava tubes in Hawaii many years ago. They made me nervous somehow, knowing they were once so hot and moving so fast. Those tall tubes used in someone’s house! Must have been some house!
And it must have been some truck to haul them away from the lava tube wall and then to those people’s home. How rude.
Funny, I kept touching the lava tubes at the exhibit, thinking they might still be hot, when I knew very well they wouldn’t be. 🙂
Fascinating. I’ve seen similar “tall” rocks along mountain roads, never knew they were lava. Those lava tubes would make great fence posts or great posts to support a deck and a roof. But who would steal them from a wildlife refuge? That’s not too bright. Where would you hide them? Do you know if those folks were arrested? I see five faces, weird little things. 🙂
I don’t know if they were arrested (or fined) or not. I hope they were at least fined a lot of money.
Little faces! Ok, now I’m seeing little faces too.
Wow. This is cool … or hot. 🙂 It’s fun to learn about the planet earth while also seeing your camping trips, where you go. I like the first and last videos, and I love the “stand” of the lava tubes. I see 9 faces, just sayin’.
I think I might be up to nine faces too. Or maybe I’m counting some of the ones I see twice. 🙂
How do you find so many extraordinary things? I knew nothing about lava. Ok, I find 8 faces. Your photos are great, and your research is great, and the videos that others have made are stupendous. I like that you give credit to other people and that you learn too. Magnificent.
How do I find this stuff? Sometimes I research online to find things in Washington State that I know nothing about, and then I go there. Sometimes I just go camping and stumble onto things that are new to me. Sometimes a friend of mine says “hey let’s go see this!” (that’s what happened this time) And sometimes I go camping and ask the locals what there is to see around the area that’s interesting. I love to learn. Thanks, Bill.
Do we have lava tubes here in the British Isles? I have not heard of them. What a fantastic thing to see. I hope we have them here so I can go see them. I see ten faces in that photo. Some are very small, and yes “weird”. 🙂 Fun comments.
Good questions! Here is link to a list of volcanoes in the UK … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanoes_in_the_United_Kingdom. None have been active for at least 50 million years. Another website said there are no lava tubes that show above land in the UK, although there may be lava tubes deep in the ground from old lava flows. So maybe there are lava tubes in Europe and you can grab a pal and go see them? I hope so.
Ten faces! More than anyone else so far.
Amazing. Love all the videos. I see 12 faces! Some really tiny.
12 faces! The competition is getting fierce! 🙂
I see 14 faces! Honest! Some are really little, like Henry says. Many are not human faces, but still they are faces. I think there is no lava in Nebraska. Somtimes I think there is nothing in Nebraska. I was raised in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington, west side of the Cascade mountains, ) and I sure miss it, but I’m settled here now, with friends and family here. But, dang it, I sure do miss mountains and trees … and lava! Thanks Ann. 🙂
Ha! funny comment about Nebraska. I drove through it once … I sure didn’t see much there, tho there must be things there that would be fascinating.
14 faces, that’s the most that anyone has found in that photo. Good eyes, Nebraska. Ok, the prize of a brand new Porsche 911 Turbo is on its way to you. Well, it might take some time to arrive with shipping delays and all, but it’s on its way for sure! 🙂
Hey Nebraska … Nevada isn’t far behind in not having trees and lovely wooded lakes, and rivers, etc. I was raised in eastern WA, near Ellensburg, but that was close to the Cascade Mountains so we had real FORESTS and rain and other gorgeous stuff. I’m getting to an age where I don’t want to move again, and I have really good friends here, like you do, but I sure do miss the greenery of Washington. And the lava! Thanks again Ann for taking me back to my home. 🙂 I see 13 factual funny faces.
13 faces … a close runner-up, second place winner. You’ll be receiving a pair of really inexpensive socks, Nevada. They’ll be in the mail soon. 🙂
Fun stuff. I really like that a bunch of you simply looked at that photo to see what you could see. It’s kind of fun to do that. Ok, I think I’ll go pull up the original high-res image of that photo and then circle the faces I find, and then I’ll post that on the blog for everyone to see.
Prizes will be shipped soon!
I see an orange eel in the bottom right, and other wonderful things too. Great info and photos.
Excellent Tina! I didn’t see that. It’s kind of a fish or an eel and is definitely orange in color. Yet another face. Good eyes.