The following morning, we left Albuquerque as LOTS of balloons ascended into the blue sky for the last day of the Balloon Fiesta. We're glad we got a little glimpse of that! We headed to a place called El Malpais National Monument, another one of those small park gems. There are a lot of volcanoes around and of course, we also saw a lot of volcanic rock and lava flows.
We stopped at a place called "Sandstone Bluffs" and played around on the outcropping of rocks. It was extraordinarily windy. Up on top, there was a small pool of water left from the rainstorm the day before. As I took a closer look, I was astounded to see tadpoles swimming in this little pool! How long had the eggs been there before the nourishing water arrived to move the little creatures forward in their stages of life? There were no other pools of water up there, just this one, and it wasn't all that deep. Deep enough, I guess. It's October! Where will the little frogs go when they're done swimming and growing? Incidentally, one of my favorite Japanese words is otamajakushi. You guessed it! It means "tadpole." You just never know what you'll find or think about in volcano country!
So after that little stop, we headed for a trail which took us across the lava. It was crazy fun. You really must try tramping across lava sometime. I couldn't believe how much fun I had. Even though the lava "bites back" as they say, we had a glorious, wonderful time following these volcanic rock cairns on our little treasure hunt. Some of them were hard to see so we were using our route-finding skills. This place is well-known for its ropey pahoe'hoe and the vulcanologists who visit still ask, "Huh, what happened here exactly?"
After El Malpais, we ran over to nearby El Morro National Monument, but the trails were closed to hiking due to the lateness of the day. There's a big inscription rock carved by Native Americans, Spanish Conquistadors, and Pioneers. The reason everyone stopped by was the constant pool of water. Water certainly attracts people, especially those who don't have it! We'll have to get back to El Morro someday.
That is so cool about the tadpoles. Who would have guessed that? I loved the photo of you with your hiking stick. Your story reminded me of a night outing at Craters of the Moon where a group of women from our faculty had an adventure. The rock cairns were much harder to find in the dark!
ReplyDeleteI saw pāhoehoe and thought, Hey! that's a Hawaiian word. But I had no idea what it meant, so I had to look it up. Kinda sad.
ReplyDeleteLook at all the words i found for lava in Hawaiian -
ʻĀ, ʻaʻā, ʻā pele (rough lava); pāhoehoe (smooth). Also: luaʻi pele, ʻōahi; ʻalā (hard). Lava flow, ʻā pele, pele; waʻa (rare). Lava cave, ʻaʻaʻā. Open place (often with vegetation) surrounded by lava, kīpuka, kīpohopoho.
Jake said it's like the Inuits & snow.
I was JUST going to say...in Alaska, the Aleuts and Yupik Indians have like 24 different words for snow...
ReplyDeleteI LOVE the word for lava CAVE: 'a'a'a (don't know how to make all the little glottal (sp?) stop marks you did...)