Alaska – Canada Travels 2014, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho, September 23rd to 25th.

Here we are at one of our bucket list destinations. What an intriguing name and who wouldn’t want to walk through the craters of the moon? The Craters of the Moon was named for its lunar-like landscape. This lava field is rich with shapes and vistas. The Visitor Center has an excellent presentation on how the area was formed and the time periods of its multiple eruptions. There’s an excellent movie and comparisons with Hawaii lava flows that illustrate how the different types of lava we see here were created. Very interesting.

Giant blocks of lava rock broke away from the cinder cone and floated along on a hot sea of lava, like ice bergs on an ocean, until the lava cooled and left them standing here.

The campground is really nice and situated in the lava flow a half mile from the visitor center. We’ll spend several days hiking and biking.

Our camp at Craters of the Moon. The Visitor Center is in the background.

On our first day at Craters we decide to ride our bikes around the nicely paved 7-mile loop through the Monument and hike all the short interpretive trails along the way. We load our packs with snacks and walking shoes and set out in the morning. Bicycling is encouraged and all the trail heads have bike racks. Bicycling is a great way to see our National Parks and Monuments. It’s a slower pace than buzzing along in a car. We appreciate the closer look at the scenery, immerse ourselves in the environment and enjoy the fresh air and great exercise.

The Devils Orchard is made up of a sharp, spiky lava flow.

The first interpretive trail is the Devils Orchard Nature Trail through a flow of sharp spiky lava. We chain our bikes and put on our walking shoes to hike the easy paved half-mile loop.

Lava trees in the Devils Orchard bear no fruit.

After our hike we switch to our biking shoes again and ride a few miles to the next interpretive trail. This is the Inferno Cone Trail which leads .4-mile steeply up a sloping shoulder of cinders to a 360 degree view of lava flows and cinder cones.

A view of distant cinder cones from the top of Inferno Cone.

Our next trail is just a half mile further where we take a short .1-mile paved hike to the Sputter Cones, miniature volcanoes formed from lava forced up through cracks near the cinder cones.

The Sputter Cones is a prehistoric looking landscape.

A paved trail leads into a Sputter Cone.

A look into the throat of a miniature volcano . . .

. . . to see what's down there. 

We ride on through the Blue Dragon Lava Flow now laying still and cold for thousands of years. The cold lava formations suggest how the lava formed. At times racing in a liquid inferno from the breached dam of a lava lake and pouring across the landscape. At other times creeping slowly in viscous pillows with red heat flaring from the cracked black crust.

The Blue Dragon Flow was named for the blue-hued scaly appearance. Indeed the flow was a monstrous, fiery thing.  

Rivers of molten lava flowed across the landscape from a lava lake when the lava dam was breached.

Pillows of Blue Dragon lava. You can imagine it creeping along over the old flow, exhaling it's fiery breath.

A Blue Dragon tendril reaches out for you.

Our next interpretive hike is the 1.8-mile Broken Top Trail that circles around a cinder cone. We see lots of interesting lava formations and rifts along the way. We stretch our imaginations and see this place being created as we walk through the lava flow.

An interpretive sign about the lava lake on the Broken Top Trail.

From the Broken Top Trail we see the Monument road curving around the hardened lava lake. You can see the dark lava dam that contained it.

Lava dreadlocks.

Waves of lava lap at the trail.

Looking into a collapsed lava tube. You can see the ridges along the walls left by the lava as the flow began to decrease.

At the same trail head we take a 4-mile hike to the Tree Molds. The lava-encased trees left impressions of their bark before incinerating.

A tree mold in the lava shows the bark and were the branches were.

The Blue Dragon Lava Flow.

On our 2^nd day we did an auto tour through the monument and hiked a few miles up the Big Craters Trail for a view into the colorful interiors of a series of large cinder cones. In the afternoon we took a ranger-guided tour through the Indian Tunnel lava tube. After the tour we hiked on our own to Beauty Cave and Boy Scout Cave lava tubes, scrambling into them and exploring them by flashlight.

Hiking along the cinder cone rim on Big Craters Trail.

Inside the big cinder cone.

The level part of the Big Craters Trail is paved so everyone can enjoy a hike through the lava field along the base of the cinder cone.

It was a beautiful morning on our last day at Crater of the Moon so we got out the bikes and took a 12-mile ride going twice around the loop to enjoy the beautiful curving road and extraordinary landscapes.

Life clings to the cinders and the flows are rich with plants, birds and lizards.

Next we head southeast out of Idaho and on to Utah.

See you down the road.
Jackie