SundayHikers: New Caves

After two weeks of hiatus, the Sunday Hikers resume the routine last Sunday. Three "muskateers", Chops, Giggles, and Captain Charlie, take off at the Last Command Post, heading toward Banzai Cliff Trail. On the road to the cliff, the wind blows so strongly that we can barely hear ourselves talk and "gossip". But as soon as we enter the trail, we are sheltered from the wind.

As we approach the Cow Town beach, we can hear the roaring of the sea, so we detour to the beach and are rewarded with the impressive scene of massive waves rolling onto the beach. It seems to be even bigger than the ones we saw three weeks ago.

Coming out of the Cow Town Trail, we veer up to Santa Claus Lane in search of the two caves. The entrance is easy to spot, as someone has installed a yellow ribbon next to the old red ribbon. We enter the boonie and follow the ribbons. The boonie is fairly thick and damp, and full of rocks and tree branches. so we are careful to pick our way and locate the first cave. It is very wet and slippery down there, so we only take a look at it and proceed to the next cave, which is also slippery. We will definitely bring ropes during drier days to explore both caves.

We exited back on the CowTown trail and the main road. We make a quick stop at the roadside cave to check out the old war relics and a very realistic looking "mother and child" formation of two rocks. We figure many of these rocks have tumbled down the cliff during cannon bombings, and some of them rest quite precariously on smaller rocks barely large enough to support these huge boulders.

We chat with the souvenirs salesman at LCP and see some cute stuff.