Day 12 - Continued
We drove until we got to US 20, a road we spend a lot of time on in
this trip. Our destination is
Craters of the Moon National Monument.
This is an area of fairly recent (at least in geological time)
volcanic activity, and at one time it was thought that it looked
much like the surface of the moon. (
Astronauts actually trained here before the moon landings).
I wanted to get there before the visitor's center closed
(a thirst, not for knowledge, but for
postcards :P), and we
were making good time until right before the main entrance. Right
there we were stopped for half an hour due to road construction. Luckily
we still made it in time.
Here we are walking across the moonscape:
Here is a closeup of some of the rock. As the signs reminded us,
there's only two kinds of lava: aa and pahoehoe. We had a lot of fun
saying that. Aa is sharp and spikey, pahoehoe is smoother and
can be ropey.
We decided, somewhat unwisely, to race to the top of this cinder cone.
(Needless to say, I didn't win).
We were back at high altitudes again and we were all exhausted at the top:
Here is the view from the top of the cinder cone. It was lava flows
as far as the eye could see:
You can see rain in the distance, luckily it did not rain much
while we were there.
We went to another cinder cone, here is the inside of the cone:
Nearby was a cone that had a deep hole in it. It was deep enough
that snow from the winter was still preserved down inside. It
is called appropriately enough the "snow cone":
We then went to the caves area of the park. These are actually old
lava tubes, and we went into three of them. Disturbingly you could
see a few areas where the roofs of old caves had collapsed in nearby.
Here is a warning sign:
We first went into Indian Tunnel, which was the largest, and had
a partially collapsed roof so you were mostly in the open.
Here I am, with someone looking very much like Lara Croft behind me
(Don't ask):
We then went into Boy Scout Cave. This is an ice cave; it is so cold
inside there is ice there year round. It was pitch dark, we
could only see by flashlight
(It was much more like real caving, very neat).
Here is a picture of some rocks inside,
with ice on them:
We also went inside of Beauty Cave, which was just as dark but
had less ice.
It started to get late, so we left and pushed on toward civilization.
We got to the town of Arco and stopped to eat at a diner,
called Pickle's Place:
We managed to order practically every kind of potato-based side they
had with supper (I got tater-tots). Also in the restaurant was the
family of the winning pitcher from the College World Series. They
had driven straight through from Omaha, stopping only briefly in
Yellowstone. They had a disturbing story about their being
no rooms anywhere nearby; this is important for later.
Arco as it turns out was the first city ever lit by nuclear power.
They are located right next to the Idaho National Labs. We started
driving, hoping to find a room in Idaho Falls... but since it
was summer tourist season in Yellowstone there were no rooms anywhere
near it, so we turned around and instead stayed in a nice motel
in Arco.
--- Ending in Arco, Idaho ---
Continue on to Day 13