Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve

We left around 7:30 after a good breakfast at the Jerome Day’s Inn that included eggs, biscuits, gravy, Canadian bacon, waffles, plus yogurt, breads, cereal, etc.

Mark drove home to get some chores done at the house. Cindy came with us to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.

We arrived before the visitor center opened, so we entered the park with the Senior Annual National Park pass and got a map. We had been to this park in 2021, during the pandemic and really enjoyed it. The area is what you would expect from a moonscape and was used to train Apollo astronauts in the 1960s. Our first stop was the 3 small cones: two spatter cones and the snow cone. These cones resembled small volcanoes, although they were created by lava thrown from a larger volcano during an eruption. We then hiked up to the Big Craters area accessed from the North Crater Trail. We hiked the other end of this trail during our 2021 visit starting at the trail head.

Imprint of tree bark in lava

We drove on to the Tree Molds and Big Sink areas. When we were there two years ago, we didn’t hike the 2 mile out and back Tree Molds Trail, so we wanted to be sure to do it this time. At the end of the trail there are impressions of trees in the hardened lava. The molds of the tree bark reminded us very much of alligator skin. While we were on the Tree Molds Trail, we saw a long-tailed weasel. We weren’t certain of the identification, but the ranger at the visitor center confirmed the identity. She told us that they are a rare sighting.

Mary lifting a pumice rock

Since the Tree Molds Trail and the Broken Top Trails share a parking area, we returned to the car for a drink before going on the 1.8-mile Broken Top Trail loop. We had walked this trail two years ago, but the formations and lava tubes are some of our favorites. While in the parking lot, Cindy talked to Robert and Loretta from Bristol, TN. They were a nice older couple who had self-converted their van and travel all over the country in retirement. We met a couple on the trail from Bavaria, visiting western states for month. We enjoyed our visit with them and discussed our upcoming trip to Germany in December. Although their English was very good, we were happy that we were able to converse with them in German as well.

Lava flows at Craters of the Moon

After returning to the car, we drove to and walked the short ½ mile Devils Orchard Nature Trail. The interpretative signage reminded us of the multiple lava flows in the area from 15,000 to 2,000 years ago. Geologists believe that at least nine distinct lava flows account for the variations in the lava in the park.

We stopped at the visitor center to ask about some flowers and the ferret we saw. The visitor center wasn’t open two years ago because of COVID, so we enjoyed looking at the exhibits and chatting with the rangers.

Lava tube at Craters of the Moon

After a lunch of peanut butter, Ritz crackers and some snacks, we left for May about 1:15. We drove through rain north of Arco to Darlington. Acro was the world’s first community to be powered by nuclear generated electricity. In a 1955 experiment a reactor provided electricity to the small town for about an hour. As we drove through the rain, the temperature dropped from 68 to 55. We ran into more rain around Mackey where we saw that the reservoir was being drained to work on the dam. We stopped in Challis for a short stretch break, then on to Hooper Lane where Mark had penne pasta with hot sausage and tomatoes for dinner.  We watched two episodes of Dark Winds, season 2 after dinner.

We went out onto their deck after dark to look at the stars. Very little light pollution exists in the area since ranches here are far apart. Also, with very little humidity in the air and no clouds in this semi-arid environment, the night sky is very clear. So many stars visible that we could hardly make out the common constellations. The Milky Way formed a clear, diagonal band across the sky. While the sky watching was excellent in 2021 compared to the east, the western fires produced a great deal of smoke, somewhat obscuring the sky. However, this year there were no major fires, and the sky was perfectly clear.