We awoke in Pocatello, ID this morning, bound for Craters of the Moon National Monument and points west. A quick gasup (notable for being the first time we’d found a Shell station on the trip — grumble), and we were off.
We headed back north on I-15 for a bit, then turned west on US-26 toward the monument. The trip was uneventful other than passing Atomic City (pop 29), lunch in Arco (pop 1000), and an empty pizza box in the road (“road pizza”, get it? Sent me into hysterics for a while — it’s been a bit of a trip). We got to the monument around 2pm.
Craters of the Moon is a park I’ve been wanting to see. I missed it both times I passed last time (vision quest and resulting move to Denver). The Apollo astronauts trained there to learn about the geology of the moon. Honestly, it reminds me a lot of Hawaii. Lots of insane lava flows all over the place. The hot spot has since (in the past 10m years) moved under Yellowstone, but apparently there’s still some leftover magma, since the local features were created about 2k years ago. Both kids did the activities necessary to become Junior Lunar Rangers of Craters of the Moon National Monument, which accomplishment comes with a sleeve patch and everything.
After the monument, we needed to figure out how to get to Boise, our destination for the evening. We made our way via a few back roads, and happened upon the “Idaho Mammoth Cave”, so we decided to try it out.
We should have known from the dirt road leading to the place that it was probably less than top notch tourism fare, but off we went anyway. The site turned out to be a fenced-off cluster of buildings with a rather impressive pile of junked cars and old wooden spoke-wheeled wagons lying around. Plus, there were several peacocks and an emu wandering the yard. Undaunted, we went in. There was a 10′ alligator mounted and stuffed just inside the door, and a very crusty old Idahoan demanding $8 a head for the privilege of seeing the cave and … collection. We paid him, and he gave us a couple Coleman lanterns, and off we went to see the “mammoth” cave. The cave was a very large lava tube, opening to 50′ high in places. There were a few misspelled signs noting geologic features and such, but let’s say that the use of the word “mammoth” in this case referred to the size of the cave, and not to the fuzzy elephantine creature. Slightly disappointing.
This cave is not creepy at all.
Back inside, we checked out the collection, which turned out to be a ~150′ diameter building crammed with taxidermied examples of just about every bird, mammal, or fish that has ever walked, crawled, flew, or swam. The centerpiece was a giraffe. We saw about 1/3 of it.
On the way out, Brett hadn’t seen the emu, so I went to show it to him, and ran into the male peacock doing its full tail threat display. Lucy had to go to the bathroom, and the outhouse was really beyond description.
In all, the whole experience felt very unreal. I do not recommend the site to others.
We made it to I-84 within another 1/2 hour, and then made a quick 90-minute run into Boise, grabbing a hotel online as we drove.
Kristi finished off Charlotte’s Web on the drive. Still a great book.
We bedded down in Boise, ID after another long day of driving. We are destined for Pendleton, OR tomorrow, and back to the Pacific Time Zone!