Underground Lakes

On July 11, 2025, I wrote that I had rented an all wheel drive vehicle the day before and when I woke that morning. I drove to get coffee before heading over to my friend’s house where she loaded her things into the car.

We went over the bridge and took 580 through Livermore. We got gas at Vasco Road and headed over Altamont Pass and onward to Stockton. Eventually we turned on to 88 and took Highway 49 to Sutter Creek. I told stories of the fun times I had had there while we looked at the shops and book store.

From there we headed up Sutter Creek Road and visited the Black Chasm Cavern National Natural Landmark. We had barely made it in time for the cavern tour, which turned out to be fantastic. There are a bunch of underground lakes there. They showed us the fairy cave which I thought was amazing. I bumped my head, but it was OK. I noted that the map they showed us in the visitor center afterwards was really interesting. There was also a geode display that the kids in the tour were ecstatic about.

When we were ready to go, we drove to the Town of Volcano and checked in to our tiny hotel. We had beers in the lobby and we walked over to the grocery store. We also visited Volcano Park and had dinner at the pub. The fried chicken was really good. Later we walked up to the cemetery and sat on the stoop and on the porch to manage the extreme heat of the late afternoon. That night we found Lord of The Rings in a stack of DVDs next to the antiquated player in our room.

 
This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.