Start - Trail Break RV Park @ Glenn's Ferry, ID [about noon]
End - Pocatello KOA @ Pocatello, ID [about 1015pm]
Distance ~ 242 miles
Map:
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After Friday's 620 mile trek I had hoped to slow it down a bit and see something worth stopping to see.
We got a very late start out of Glenn's Ferry.
We drove east and crossed the Snake River and saw huge windmills all over.
We were going to just head NE to the Craters of the Moon but saw a sign for Hagerman Fossil Field and just decided to take a detour.
Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument
Along the Snake River is a part of the Oregon Trail and an area rich in fossils.
We stopped at the tiny National Park station in Hagerman (on the corner of North State Street and East Reed Street) which has a tiny museum with a fossil horse and a place for the kids to dig in the sand to find and identify some horse bones.
K and J at the Museum in Hagerman in front of the horse fossil
We went a ways south and across the river and then a sharp west into the fossil park but not enough to really get into the fossil fields as the best area was under reconstruction (area to the far NW).
Viewpoint on the Snake River
Viewpoint on Snake River
An actual part of the Oregon Trail along the Snake River
It took a couple of hours to get back on the road heading east into the small towns of Wendell, Shoshone, and Carey and back north east to Craters of the Moon.
The fascinating part of doing the RV trip in 2011 is that despite being in the middle of very isolated rural Idaho my HTC Evo had enough signal to act as a wifi Hotspot for the netbook and ipad so two of the kids were on the Internet for much of the repetitive parts of the drive. The middle son had fun watching Big Bang Theory on the little TV.
Craters of the Moon National Park
A few miles NE of Carey and maybe 15 minutes out from the park entrance you see the lava field landscape for the first time and it is pretty amazing. Suddenly the landscape goes black and rocky after endless miles of standard prairie and small farms.
We made it to Craters visitor center 20 minutes before the center closed (6pm). It is also small but a good spot to hit the bathroom and grab a map and get a free cave permit.
A small diorama really helps explain the massive lava which is not really from a volcano but from cracks and fissures over a period of 16 to 10 million years ago. As the continental plate moved west the releases continued sporadically. Eventually the area we now call Yellowstone is now above the spot where all these cracks are...
The caves are really lava tubes and you need a permit as there is a disease that is affecting the bat population in these parts so they don't allow you to visit the caves if you have been in other caves with your shoes etc
Even if the the visitor center had closed the park is open 24 hours a day and surprisingly has a small tent and RV campground right near the entrance.
There are several stopping points on a seven mile loop road into the park.
A couple of the deeper spots are temporarily closed as the road is under reconstruction (5 and 6 on the park map)
The two areas we stopped at were the Cinder Cone (4) and the Caves (7).
The Cinder Cone was a must. A ten minute hike that is slightly steep gets you to the top with an amazing view. T and K went up with me with T leading the way. Don't forget to take water (we forgot) and we were glad to have our wide brim hats.
T just before starting the hike up the cinder cone
Daddy and K before the hike
The hike up
The view from the top was great
K at the top
Daddy at the top looking NE
There was a really cool tree up on top of the cinder cone.
The hike down was easy.
The Caves (spot 7 on the map)
Winding around the Cinder Cone and back towards the entrance was our last stop with a small parking area for maybe twenty cars and five RV pull thru spots.
The trail from there to the caves is about a quarter to half mile but it's a crazy up and down winding paved trail that goes right over the jagged lava rocks and fissures.
There are four caves all of which are treacherous. This is not for sandals! Bring water flashlight and good shoes.
Indian Cave is by itself and was a fun lava tube.
Apparently park sign writers are often hungry when thinking of how to describe park features...
There are lots of skylight holes where the roof has collapsed so not really a dark cave but still treacherous as lots of sharp shifting rocks to climb up and down until the exit hole.
S and T and I explored and had fun. Oddly there were pigeon like birds and no bats. The birds seemed to be guiding us through the cave like junior park rangers.
S & T inside the Indian Tunnel cave
We made it all the way to the end without mishap but then S had a minor mishap climbing out with a small bump to her knee.
S sitting at the exit.
T at the top of the exit
Me climbing out of the exit hole
Crossing back to the paved path you are guided by some rock cairns as you walk back parallel to the tube on the surface.
It was about 820pm by the time we made it back to the RV.
There was a kids park ranger program at 8pm at the campground but we just missed it.
Craters to Picatello
From the park it's about 14 miles to the tiny town of Arco to the NE.
Then turn SE and eventually on to the I-15 south through Blackfoot and around 1015pm into the Pocatello KOA RV park.
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