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Just South of Arco Idaho is the Craters of the Moon National Monument. This is an area that has had fairly "recent" volcanic activity so there are many different volcanic landscapes here including cinder cones and lava tubes.
A few astronauts visited here before going to the moon to learn about the volcanic landscapes. It is very barren here and I would think it would be like being on another planet.
We climbed the largest cinder cone. The park has the largest purely basaltic cinder cones in the world.
There are a few trails leading to the mouths of the small volcanoes.
The lava flows are incredibly rough and jagged. walking across them is not only difficult (an angle twister) but pretty rough on your shoes.
All over the place you can find spots showing the "liquid" type flows that occurred here.
Some of the lava tubes are really huge and have collapsed sections.
The molten rock is in a drip form from the walls and ceiling.
Other lava tubes are surprising cold. We were there in the second have of July, it was 90 degrees out side and just a few feet underground there is still plenty of ice.
Some of the rock looks very metallic and when you tap on it with a flashlight it kind of rings like cast iron.
A couple hours drive south of Craters of the Moon is Twin Falls Idaho. The Snake River passes through here and flows over Shoshone Falls. It drops 212 feet, higher the Niagara Falls. Even in July the flow was still pretty high.
The canyon below the falls is where Evil Knievel did his famous, not to successful, rocket motorcycle jump across the Snake River.
From this point we traveled on south heading home and made an overnight stop in Kaysville and stayed at the Cherry Hill RV Park. My friend Mike told me about this place because the stayed there as kids on vacations. The campground is full of cherry trees, but we were a little late and most all the cherries were gone. The park has a fun little water park attached to it and we spent part of the day having fun getting wet!
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