Travelrogue: Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Somewhere, Idaho

If you've ever wanted to visit a vast expanse of endless churned up land being prepped for the largest suburban subdivision in the universe, have I got a place for you.

If you never get out of your car and take a closer look, making sure to read the signs that explain what you are really looking at, it would be easy to whisk by the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve assuming that a lot of land was about to be sculpted into something twee and dopey like "Gentle Meadows" or "Coyote Hills," complete with minimalls and parks and maybe even a library. All with matchy matchy stonework and raw wood paneling and cursive fonts.

My adventure that day began like any other, in search of coffee, which I found easily by backtracking to Bellevue. Then I made the terrible mistake of trusting Google Map Woman who is, indeed, trying to kill me. First it was the bay, now it was sending me on a dirt road to nowhere that got bumpier and more precarious by the minute, and even became a bit of an offroading experience in some patches where the holes turned into little caverns of death that I managed not to fall into while cursing Google Map Woman, her family, her programmers, and Skynet in particular since I know they are behind this somehow.

Breadcrust Bomb, the tastiest of bombs.

My mistake was punching in "Craters of the Moon" which Google Map Woman interpretive danced into "Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve"...dead center in the middle of the park where no one but rangers go. Even though the map never cut out, the tiny road on the map reached a point where it no longer existed in real life. It was still on the map and insisting I go flying into a black field, but there was no road in front of me. I had to find a way to turn around without sliding into sharp rocks and backtrack to the highway.

We shall love him and hug him and call him Dusty.

I should have punched in "Craters of the Moon visitors center" and saved myself about an hour and a half of misery and terror for my car and the tires in particular. I did get to see parts of the park that most don't, but since it was from my car, it literally looked like a never ending, abandoned housing development inexplicably placed in the middle of nowhere.

Of course, if I'd seen the extremely tiny sign on the way in, I could have avoided this little adventure, but I missed it and paid dearly. Word to the wise--make your plans with laser focus!

I finally arrived at the visitors center and walked through the brief, somewhat discombobulated exhibits. It seemed like I was walking through the footnotes of the book about Craters of the Moon, and if I'd had no context, I might've been a bit lost and a little annoyed at the choices they made when putting it together. It was also apparent that the exhibits needed some care (and dusting).

Cinder Crags

Another sign of the off season happened when I left the visitors center to enter the park's main drive through, with stops along the way to see the sights close up and learn more about the area through the different signs posted on hiking paths. There was no one to take admissions, which they were still charging, so visitors were advised to pull over and pay via a card machine or, if you were like me with a season pass, to place the pass on the dash so rangers could see it. Not that I saw a single ranger, but I did as I was told.

Ropy Lava

Craters of the Moon does look a bit moon-y, if it married Mars and had a big, craggy, ugly Lava Baby. Because that's what it is: huge fields of lava that have been there some 2,000 to 15,000 years (x). On the first stop, you can walk through the northern lava flow and check out the origins of the flows to the south, where it is evident that one large hill was active much later than the one next to it due to the vegetation growth. You can see many types of lava flows (my favorites were the "ropy" variety, though we all love a good striated pattern, ay) and giant cinder crags like hunched, tortured gargoyles guarding the meanest corner of Hell.

The second stop I made was to see the spatter cones, described here. They are apparently very rare and very delicate--the site has signage with photos that show the deterioration of the cones over time, which is noticeably dramatic. They have a paths built so that you can walk up and see inside them. I went to the smaller one which was still scary when looking into the maw and imagining a churning cauldron below. Everything around Craters of the Moon is dormant for now, but it lies in an area that can change depending on future geological activity.

Spatter Cones

Background hill is the origin of this particular mess.

I am glad I went--it was nice to hike around and see different types of lava flows and just how extensive the lava fields are. What was wilder was the fact that it was in the middle of Idaho. When you are driving past all the sage grass and rolling, soft hills, or beautiful snowy mountains, the last thing you would expect, especially in the middle of nowhere, is spiky chunks of lava for miles and miles. It seems dropped out of the sky, perhaps teleported from planet Xenon to freak out the resident ape life.

I have tons of pictures to share, most posted below, with comments as I see fit. Back in college, I got a solid C in Geology--shocker, I know--but now I wish I paid more attention. I think I've learned more during this trip than that class or any geological knowledge I've accumulated over a lifetime. I certainly didn't intend for this leg of my big road trip to be so volcano-centric, but that's how it has turned out.