Coffee, Caves and Arches

We like to take our coffee for walks in the mornings.  This is a move day, but we have some extra time before we leave camp, so we took a relatively long coffee walk.  We decided to walk down to the far end of the campground and explore a service road that leads up to the campground from an I-10 frontage road a mile or two away.

As we passed the lumpy hump we had climbed the other day, we spotted a small stone arch on the far side:

This was entirely too attractive, so we moved closer to get a better look:

As we climbed some flat rocks up to the arch, we looked down to discover a large number of bedrock mortars dug into the volcanic rock:

A bedrock mortar was used by native people for grinding grain, acorns or other food products.  In a case like this, where there are a cluster of holes in proximity, it is an indication that prehistoric communities gathered in groups.  The name "gossip stone" is sometimes used for them, indicating the social context of the food grinding activity. Another term for this type of hole is "bedrock milling station."  Another type of milling site found in stone is a "metate," which, in contrast, is a flat, trough-shaped depression in the rock.

Back to our original agenda, we looked up and caught our favorite view of the stone arch:

However, as we moved close to get that last photo, we looked down to find a series of three or four caves.  Each of them had bedrock mortars in their floors, and the cave ceilings were blackened from campfire soot.  Here is Kathy at the entrance to once of the caves below the arch:

On closer examination, we found that a path had been worn in the rock for native people to climb to the top of our lumpy hump, where sentries undoubtedly climbed to watch for marauders.  This made sense of something we had discovered when we climbed the lumpy hump the other day and found what looked like foot- and hand-holds pecked into the solid rock.  We used those hand and foot holds to make our way to the summit.  Now we feel pretty confident surmising that those were placed in the rock by native inhabitants to reach the top just as we did!

Walking back to our campsite, empty coffee mugs in hand, we marveled that you never know what you'll find when you venture out, even if it's just for a little coffee stroll.