Caves

Mr. Strega and I had a lovely, quiet Fourth--I am doing a lot of stuff on various projects, with looming deadlines for some, and also have student work to correct, so I wasn't going to be doing much anyway. Mr. Strega rousted me out of my office at home to go over to his friend Ika's house; Ika (obviously not his real name) grilled tri-tips, and we also had an Italian sausage-roasted peppers-potato dish and broccoli, then settled down with our plates to watch fireworks from New York. Afterwards, Ika--a geek supreme-- treated us to an episode of the "Planet Earth" series, in high definition.

I chose the episode on caves and I have to say--only HD television can make a huge mountain of bat guano, with cockroaches crawling all over it, look stunning!

Seriously, though, a portion of the program was devoted to the Lechugilla caverns in New Mexico, which are located in the Carlsbad Caverns national park. This was an absolutely amazing viewing experience (Ika has one of those gi-normous TV screens). Lechugilla has room after room of amazing crystal formations, like walking into the mother of all geodes, and only a few people are allowed to go there every year (it's serious cavers only), as the system is incredibly delicate. For general information, click on the link to see more about this cave. It made me wonder how many of these kind of wonders are still out there, waiting to be discovered.

At any rate, I had a happy Fourth, and am looking forward to more of a quiet weekend. As far as I know, no fires broke out from illegal fireworks around here, so that was good--I nearly packed a "go-bag" again.