One Park, One Museum, One Stamp at a Time
Walking on the surface of another planetAfter surviving the massive swarms of bees and wasps at Minidoka, we traveled 90 miles northeast to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. I have vague memories of visiting Craters of the Moon as child with my family and leaning over a cinder cone to see snow inside the opening of one of the volcanoes. I shared these memories with my fiance as we first began to pass by the charred lava landscape of the park along the highway. From the road, jagged volcanic rock and a number of cinder cones are visible. Craters of the Moon truly looks like the surface of another world. The lack of vegetation and scarred landscape are unlike any other part of America that I have visited. We pulled into the visitor center to pick up some information, maps, and the stamps for the park and for the Oregon National Historic Trail. Craters of the Moon has a number of caves that visitors are welcome to explore on their own but you must check in at the VC to receive a cave permit. They want to make sure that any clothing you are wearing, or your shoes, are free of diseases found in other caves. My wife had to dig an extra pair of shoes out of the car before we got to the caves since the shoes she was wearing had been in the Lehman Caves at Great Basin a couple of days before. The VC was nice and there was a ranger with a telescope allowing for guests to view the moon. Craters of the Moon, like Great Basin, is an International Dark Sky Park. From the VC we took off on the Loop Road, which travels in a big circle to each of the most visited sites in the park. We made our first stop at the Devil' Orchard Trail, a 0.5 mile paved trail of cinder beds along a crater wall. This trail features a series of signs describing the difficulties of preserving the fragile volcanic environment. We next stopped at the Inferno Cone. This cinder cone features a steep trail up the side of the cone that ends with panoramic views of the area. The trail is only about a half mile but is a steep climb. The views at the top were worth the climb and its not everyday that you get a chance to hike up the side of a volcano. We next visited the Splatter Cones, which were the formations I remembered from my childhood visit to the park. These were a collection of small volcanoes that formed from blobs of molten lava the splattered from nearby cones thousands of years ago. It is a brief walk from the parking lot up these small cones. You can look down into the mouths of these once active volcanoes, one of which features snow throughout the year. From here we headed to our last stop, the Caves Trail. It is about a mile hike to the largest and most accessible cave, Indian Tunnel. My fiance decided to skip the caves so I ventured solo into the darkness while she rested topside. There are large openings on two ends of this cave so there is a decent amount of light throughout a large portion of the cave. I climbed over some rocks and made my way to the far end of the cave where I was able to work my way through complete darkness for a few minutes to the end of the cave. I spent about 20 minutes exploring before heading back toward the trail. We stopped at one more cave before leaving, the Dew Drop Cave. This cave required far more climbing and featured very little light. There were two other caves down another branch of the trail that we decided to pass on seeing. One of the other caves is called the Boy Scout Cave, supposedly because the entrance is so narrow that only a Boy Scout can fit through it. After the caves, we paid the visitor center a second visit to check out the gift shop and refill our water bottles. We weren't entirely sure where we would stop for the night but decided to head further up the road since we had accomplished everything we had wanted to see at Craters of the Moon. We paid a brief visit to the small town of Arco, ID, a brief drive to the east of Craters of the Moon. It was interesting to discover that Arco was the first community in the world to be powered solely by nuclear energy. From Arco, we headed north in US 93 along the Salmon River. New Units Visited: 3*
Craters of the Moon NM&PRES - Oregon NHT Total Affiliated Areas This Year: 15 Total Units: 27
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