Craters of the Moon « Sara Sheehy

Craters of the Moon

Posted in Adventure by sarasheehy on 19 April 2009

Ski season is officially (as of last weekend) over. Sigh. What is a girl to do with those long, free weekends? Pack up the car and head south? Bingo.

Today Mike and I traveled to Craters of the Moon National Monument between Carey and Arco, Idaho. (as a side note, Arco was the United States’ first atomic town, whoeee!). The weather here in Ketchum was beautiful too, but Craters of the Moon gets unbearable in the summer months due to heat. So heading down on their first open weekend this year was a wise move. Far fewer tourists, and a nice cool breeze to keep the lava from melting your face off.

Craters of the Moon National Monument is a 750,000 acre preserve of hardened lava flows. Part of the Snake River Plain, it is on the same volcanic plain as Yellowstone. The seven mile loop road we drove covers a lot of different lava features – cinder cones, monoliths, lava caves, spatter cones, and volcanic rifts. We seemed to be the only tourists today willing to leave our car and hike around, so we had the trails blissfully to ourselves. A beautiful Sunday under bluebird skies, walking on a moonscape, was exactly the right medicine to cure the end-of-ski-season blues. (Click on any of the images to be taken to the Flickr gallery of today’s images)