Our hike into an extinct volcano

As I promote my new hiking book, I find myself thinking a lot about all of the great hikes we've gone over the years. One of my favorites is at Amboy Crater, an extinct volcano in California's Mojave Desert, that we hiked in spring 2009. I've got a photo album of it at my Facebook site.

I carried you on my back in a child carrier to and from the volcano (in the photo at upper right, you can see the cone on the right side of the horizon), but once we got inside the cinder cone, I let you out. You had a blast running around the crater floor, which was covered in soft clay and hard black basalt. You'd pick up the basalt rocks and throw them and look at every bug that moved around.

It was quite a neat thought to think our playground for the afternoon was the center of a volcano that a few thousand years ago had spewed lava for miles around!