Donna and Gary's RV Adventures: Craters of the Moon

Arco, Idaho doesn't have a lot of tourist appeal; it's a farming and ranching community, and those roots run deep. However, one of the major attractions of the area is the extensive lava flow and cinder cone area known as Craters of the Moon National Monument.

We finally had a chance to visit the park the day before the Fourth of July. There is a seven mile driving loop through the most interesting sights, so we set off, leaving Sasha to the comfort of the air conditioned motorhome. She was a little miffed, but she would not have been happy walking around in 80 degree weather.

Our first clue that something cataclysmic had occurred in this area was this tree skeleton. Dated at more than 500 years old, the remains speak to the harsh environment hereabouts.

Much like the Hawaiian Islands, the volcanoes in this area lie along a Rift, or system of fissures along which a chain of volcanoes erupted. The oldest of the cinder cones along this 52 mile long rift is the Crescent Butte, having erupted about 15,000 years ago. At the other end of the rift is the North Crater, the youngest of the bunch at only 2,000 years old. Interesting that the earths crust has drifted 52 miles in the last 15,000 or so years.

Along the trail called The Devils Orchard are a number of crazy and interesting lava formations. Thousands of them bear the imprint of the trees that were swallowed up during the lava flow.

And many seemed to be petrified.

An interesting piece of wood showed up just around a bend in the trail.

Many of the chunks of lava rock were as big as houses and had been thrown miles from the cinder cone!

Large area of crushed lava rock were spotted with thousands of small plants. Called Dwarf Buckwheat, a tiny cluster of flowers is connected to a root system that can be over three feet in diameter. Regularly spaced, the plants efficiently tap available water and the white surface of the leaves reflects rather than absorbs most of the sun's rays.

Just down the road we came across a cinder cone that has a trail to the top. We wanted to go up, just to see what was in the bottom of the cone, but close proximity to other hikers and the steep grade got the better of us. We only made it half way!

We did find out way to what is called a Spatter Cone. In this type of cone, the hot lava is thrown up and out in great gobbets of semi solid rock, leaving a jagged, rough surface inside the cone. This lava does not flow, but is spit up and out. This spatter cone still has ice in the bottom!

Miles upon miles of cracked lava can be seen along with several small cones.

Lava flowed for miles, finding its way down valleys and around hills just as a river might do.

In many areas of the park, lava did flow out of cinder cones at such a high temperature that it went for miles before it cooled. Behind this flow, a ridge created by a previous lava flow acted as a dike, and directed this flow to the north.

We left Craters of the Moon park with a new appreciation of how violent the surface of the earth was thousands of years ago!

Today is the Fourth of July! Happy Fourth, Everybody! We took a short 90 mile jaunt northwest on Highway 93, to dig a little deeper into the Sawtooth mountain range.