Skull Rock

Slow down. Skull Rock is just ahead on your right. Look right for two eye sockets in the rock. That's it. Parking is along the road, so pull completely off, avoid the deep sand, watch for people on foot, and use the crosswalk. When you pull out, you're still heading east. There's no restroom at the rock. Jumbo Rocks Campground, just west, has vault toilets but no water. Live Oak picnic area, a little over half a mile past the rock on your right, is the last restroom for about seven miles. To see the rock up close, it's a short walk from the parking area. The full loop is one point seven miles and a hundred sixty feet of climbing, an hour or two, with stairs and steep narrow spots. Those eye sockets are tafoni, which rhymes with macaroni, and nobody has fully worked them out. The usual answer is water drops, but they may have started as rotted patches under the soil, then opened into pits once erosion stripped the soil away. So the skull's eyes may have begun underground. If you're parked, look south for Elephant Rock, near the parking spaces. If you're parked, get close to any boulder. Those bright splotches are lichens, and patches a few inches across may easily be over fifty years old, with some in the hundreds. Many lizards and snakes here probably go their whole lives without a drink. They get water from food and make no urine, passing a solid waste instead. Bring water even for the short walk. Somewhere in these rocks are the Jumbo Rocks Tunnels. A nineteen eighty-three park study lists them, and it says nothing is known about who developed them or what they produced. You don't often read that in a government report.