Craters of the Moon

We woke early again, anxious for the trip to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. We went to the deck to stargaze while we waited for sunrise. There were so many stars visible that it was difficult to make out the common constellations. The Milky Way was the characteristic diagonal band across the sky. There was still a good bit of smoke in the air from the fires throughout the West, but the stars were still much more visible than in the cloudy Eastern US.

When Mark got up he made an excellent scrambled egg breakfast for us as we prepared for the day trip to Craters of the Moon. We drove two hours south on Rt. 93 and Rt. 26 to the park entrance. Cindy bought lifetime National Park senior pass, which for $80 is a great deal providing admission for up to four people into any National Park. The visitor center wasn’t fully open and only a few people at a time were allowed in the gift shop. None of the interactive displays at the visitor center were open. A ranger was at a tent outside the visitor center distributing maps and answering questions. Mary went into the gift shop to get her National Park Passport stamp, and we continued through the park.

We parked at the trailhead for the North Crater Flow Trail, a 4 mile trail through lava flows, lava tunnels, obsidian and pumice formations. Because of some steep inclines and difficult footing on the lava trails, this is classified as “strenuous” by the Park Service. It is no wonder that this area was used to train the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s since the cooled lava forms a terrain that appears much like a moonscape. Since the North Crater Flow Trail was not a loop, we walked about halfway then returned to Mark’s truck to drive to the Inferno Cone Trail. This trail about ½ mile long but is classified as “strenuous” by the Park Service because of the steep incline up the side of the cinder cone. The view over the Great Rift and the Snake River Plain from the top of the cone is beautiful . The smoke in the air prevented seeing the Tetons 100 miles away.

We continued on the loop road to the Spatter Cones area where two large lumps of lava where thrown forming around a small central vent. These resembled small volcanos and had a short trail  allowing viewing the vent as well as the outsides of the structures. While parked at the Spatter Cones, we had a quick lunch of ham sandwiches, Aldi trail mix and almonds.

Of course, as we drove through the area, we stopped for the interpretative signage learning about the differences in pahoehoe and aa lava and where each can be seen in the area’s lava flows. The same hotspot that created the geysers and other phenomena at Yellowstone was under the Craters of the Moon areas for about 4 million years from about 10 to 6 million years ago. This caused the violent eruptions leading to the formation of huge craters. More gentle eruptions from 6 million years ago until 15,000 years ago buried the caldera from the previous eruptions in a layer of lava up to 6,000 feet thick. The following period from 15,000 to 2,000 years ago was a time when the Great Rift stretched the earth’s crust causing eight major eruption periods bringing magma to the surface creating the terrain that we see today giving the area a very lunar appearance. This lunar appearance led to the park being used by NASA as a training ground for the Apollo missions. Allen Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, Gene Cernan and Joe Eagle came to Craters of the Moon in 1969 as they prepared for landing on the surface of the moon.

Our next stop came recommended by the park ranger at the park entrance. Broken Top Loop Trail is a 1.8 miles hike rated “moderate” by the Park Service. There were numerous trail guide along the walk pointing out interesting things to see along the trail. There were several lava caves along trail, but these are closed because the bat populations using the caves are susceptible to white nose and other communicable diseases that can be brought into the caves by visitors. This trail has excellent examples of many of the volcanic features that we have seen and read about during our visit.

Our last stop of the day was at Devil’s Orchard Trail, which is an easy 1/2 mile walk through areas where parts of a crater wall were carried like a raft by lava flows and dropped on existing lava. We read that a minister traveling through the area commented that it so inhospitable that it was like the Devil’s Orchard.

After departing the park, we stopped in the town of Arco for soft drinks. Arco’s claim to fame is that it was the first community in the world to be lit by electricity generated solely by nuclear power. This occurred for about an hour on July 17, 1955, powered by Argonne National Laboratory’s BORAX-III reactor at the nearby National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), now the Idaho National Laboratory. In 1961 a steam explosion at a reactor there killed three employees in the only reactor accident in the US resulting in fatalities.

We drove back past the site of the 1983 Mt. Borah Earthquake, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake near MacKay in 1983, that killed two children and caused $12.5 million in property damage. The 21 mile fault lifted Mt. Borah by six feet in a matter of seconds and altered the frequency of the eruptions of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful about 150 miles away.

On returning back to the Whittington’s home, we found that a severe wind storm brought down several trees, scattered branches over much of the yard and damaged the chicken house. We picked up the sticks from the yard and carried them over to the BLM property nearby. We plan to cut the trees from the fences and off buildings tomorrow.

As we were unpacking from the day, we saw double rainbows over the desert viewable from the Whittington’s family room. Dinner was leftovers with the enchiladas from Monday and pizza from Thursday along with a garden salad. After dinner we enjoyed some of Mark’s homemade vanilla and dark chocolate ice cream.