Craters of the Moon National Monument

June 18 2021

It was another bright sunny and hot day of course as we explored Craters of the Moon, actually it wasn’t to hot when we arrived. First up was a short .2 miles walk. Now let me tell you that .2 took some doing, it was up the side of this pretty steep cinder cone. From the top once you stopped huffing and puffing and could stand up straight enough to look around you could see a good long ways. We took a bottle of water with us and was I ever glad we did, it was gone before we left the top.

Next up were 2 super short paved walks that were nothing spatular except one of the holes still had ice in the bottom.

Onward and around the 1 way road we went, where we stopped at some lave tubes (caves). The sign said .8 miles so we figured 2 miles round trip, the path was paved. We made it to one of the larger ones and climbed down into the belly of the beast. Nothing paved here, you did need to watch your footing and as you walked along there was only 1 spot that was pretty dark for a few feet, we just used the lights on the phones to see where we were placing our feet. Other places you had to climb over rocks where the ceiling caved in, from above they looked like large holes in the ground, from below you could see blue sky and no way out, so we continued on, eventually climbing out, looking around there was NOTHING but the lava field and 1 sign saying to follow some post back to the path. Not to long before we reached the path Marys App thingy said 1 mile, and that we had been gone less than an hour but in that hour the heat felt like it skyrocketed. You’re standing in the black or dark lava field with the sun glaring down and the heat being reflected back. The tempeture was cranking up that was for sure. We started to go to a couple of other caves, on a different path, once we were on the path and realized how far the path went I decided that I could not make it out there and back alive in the heat, we had already emptied both bottles of water by then also. Sadly we headed back to the jeep and it’s AC, I really wanted to visit the other caves because at least one of them has ice in it all year around.

Back at the jeep, we had put in the windshield sun screen, taking it down and rolling it up burned your hands, yes it was HOT.

It was a couple more quick stops at some overlooks and headed home.

The End