Stomping on Moon Dust
Craters of the Moon National Monument (43°27′42″N 113°33′46″W) encompasses three major lava fields along the Great Rift of Idaho where the earth’s crust is being pulled apart. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see this part and didn’t even know about it till now! It seems that it’s only after we’ve visited a place that we do research on it and learn something about it.
Craters of the Moon is named because a geologist by the name of Harold T. Sterns described the area in 1923 as, “the surface of the moon as seen through a telescope.” The national monument covers nearly 2,900 square km but the main visitor section is only about 10 square km which has an 11 kilometre scenic drive. We didn’t know what to expect but this was still surprising. Essentially the scenic drive is a single loop with stops at points of interest along the way. I was surprised that it is a single lane road and each attraction has just a small little parking lot. It’s a good thing that there weren’t a lot of people.
First we stopped at the visitor centre and got some advice from the park rangers and a visitor pass to enter the caves. Then we headed out stopping at the North Crater Flow Trail where we walked through part of a lava flow and then climbed the Inferno cone for a panoramic view of the landscape.
Th inferno cone is the type of volcano that explodes with gas shooting out big globs of lava. The cone is now just a big mound and there’s no hole in it. It is, however, covered up of small ash rocks.
We also got to visit two smaller splatter cones and step inside what remains of the hole at the top. That was pretty cool. There was a sign that talked about how these cones had been damaged over the years from careless tourists walking all over them and so now there’s dedicated paths and some guard rails.
There are five lava tubes that can be explored in the National Monument. We went into three of them and one that did not have a name. These lava tubes are generally quite larger and go very deep into the pitch black. We had to bring out head lamps with us and reached the end of a few. One of the caves was even suppose to have ice but the maps outside the cave are poorly drawn and we went left instead of right.
Late in the day we were beginning to get tired and hungry. We’d seen enough caves so Yuki skipped her way back to the car over the lava fields.
Originally we were planning on camping somewhere closer to our hike the next day but after another picnic dinner at the visitor centre we decided it was probably a good idea to camp at the National Monument.
This was a good decision because we had a relaxing evening at a great campsite. Now we can also say that we’ve camped on the Moon :P
