Landscaping Project With Bonus Archeology Experience
Part 1 - River rock and lava and houses, oh my.
Greeting kind souls. Just a short post to share what I have been up to the last 3 days.
It all started innocently enough. My driveway is 700ish feet to the road and there are were a gaggle of ruts that make the drive bumpy in good weather, muddy in bad. I have been filling ruts with straw and dirt from nearby. Then, on Monday, I wandered around and found a dry creek bed with great rock.(pictured above and below)
2nd pic is to the left of 1st.
While raking the furthest pile I hit lava rock in a thin layer. I've been wanting to mess with some lava flow and see what's under it. A couple of layers down I found this.
90 degree angles and straight lines made me suspicious. A local expert told me a house burned down on this spot a long time ago. So I grabbed a broom to gently brush back the rest and found this.
Here is what the place looked like at the end of day 1.
The lines end up extending several feet in each direction. My working theory is that lava came through and destroyed the house and all that is left is stone floor and/or foundation.
Most of day 2 was spent moving dirt and rocks while trying to keep everything intact. Here is what it looked like this morning.
I poked around and experimented with different techniques to clear away the dirt and lava without damaging the house remains. I'll go into more detail in part 2.
Today I'll leave you with a few pics of different areas I've uncovered.
Here you can see the several layers of dirt and rock along the ridge and the first thin layer of lava that didn’t wash away with the hose.
The white rocks go on in a straight line for 15ish feet. If I had been more careful with the water, they could have all been vertically aligned.
Here is a big section of floor that all had a layer of what looks like white paint. Some of which can be seen on the right center of this picture.
By the time I cleaned up this section, the light was bad. I'll have better pictures in the morning. A teaser for part 2. O.o
Until next time, be just a bit kinder than you need to be. (Thanks Tim Ferris)
This is interesting to me, having spent my whole life (except for a few months in Wisconsin as a child, and an occasional business trip) within a hundred miles of the ocean on the East Coast, that you found the remains of the burned house under a lava layer. Are you in the general vicinity of one of the conterminous volcanoes that've erupted since 1900 (Lassen, St. Helen's)?
Filling your ruts with straw (or any organic matter) and dirt is probably not a good idea. While it looks like you don't get a lot of rain there, any rain is going make the straw decompose into compost. It'll retain water and stay muddy after a rain. You won't get good traction in it. Fill your driveway with small rock (gravel). The 3 most important rules for building any roadway is drainage, drainage and drainage.