The girls are holding lava rock for us in this picture along the trail to the Bandera Volcano crater. Behind them is a valley of piles of huge lava rock boulders left behind when the pressure from the eruption finally blasted out the side of the mountain and the molten lava flowed out through the valley and hardened when it met the cooler air.
This was an unexpected gem. It's not a national monument and the signs for it remind you of something you'd see on the way to Lookout Mountain or Gatlinburg. I thought it might be a little kitschy, but it turned out to be really cool.
The welcome center was in an old trading post building that was built in the 1930s. There was a trail leading from the trading post up the mountain to the edge of the crater. It was about a mile with several interpretive stops along the way which taught the kids about the different types of rock formations and how the eruption has effected the trees, plants and wildlife. For instance, we learned that because of a high iron content in the lava rock and soil the trees are unusually attractive to lightning. We learned the difference between Ponderosa pines and Pinon pines, too.
This is a good picture of the crater. I believe the map said the crater was 1400 feet across and over 800 feet deep. We had never been to a volcano before, so it was a novelty for the whole family. Thankfully, there were no snakes on the trail today.
The cool thing about this place is that in addition to the volcano, they also have a cave that never gets above 31 degrees. When you hike back down from the crater, you take another trail on the other side of the trading post and walk about a 1/4 mile through the lava field to a cave opening with stairs going down into the hole. At the bottom of the stairs is a pool at the mouth of the cave that is frozen...in July! The guide map said the ice was about 26 feet thick this time of year. Naturally, Erin wanted to know if we could go ice skating!
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