Driving through Idaho is a fairly monotonous experience. It's a series of flat grasslands with cattle roaming about interspersed with rolling hills studded with sagebrush. After driving through this for hours (and hours and hours), the landscape changed suddenly - the ground looked like it had been tilled by a giant, with mounds of black earth piled up all around us.
Craters of the Moon National Monument lies in the Snake River Plain, smack dab in the middle of Idaho. The monument contains more than 25 volcanic cones and three lava fields which lie on the Great Rift of Idaho.
We did a few short hikes in the area. We climbed up this cinder cone - Inferno Cone - for a view of the park. The wind was blowing so hard it almost knocked us over!
The second trail we did was the Broken Top Loop Trail which took us through the sagebrush fields and then over some lava - it was so cool to see all the different patterns and formations made by the flowing lava!
The best part of the experience was our campsite which was set in the middle of piles of lava. That night, we woke up to a wind storm shaking our tent - we'd hoped that our campsite would protect us from the wind but I think the wind just got caught in the cove and whipped right back at us. Unfortunately we didn't get much sleep - I ended up sleeping in the car - because when we woke up at 4:30am, it was time to head to Borah Peak, the highpoint of Idaho ... (post coming soon!)
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